ya I thought the road was a bird head.  If you want the guy to be a leprechaun make his clothes green and maybe a red beard, I just thought he was some old guy.

Dithering is not really necesary in terms of shading in pixel art. avoid it at all cost, specially when you have over 48 colors to use. save it when the palette is really restricted or when you want to aply a rough texture(like sand, for example) to a surface.

just don't use dither to shade.

You probably don't really have time to fix this now, but that road to a mine (I assume that is what it's supposed to be) really looks a lot like a bird's head.