I agree with Philip in that the posture is incorrect, and the legs are too short in relative to his (her?) arm length. I like the overall design, so keep at it. :)

Thank you for the compliment. ^_^  As a noob, they're so encouraging! \^0^/

 nice design

Good advice on finding shades, thank you. My current avatar(pink haired elf-ish one) is taken from some old photos of me. >_> I'd probably help this piece by throwing this skin pallet on...I'll certainly try that for starters! I tend to do things at 800%+, contrast seems all right at that level but zoom out and...gee, where'd it go?

Well if you search for references of asian faces on google and ignore the overexposed ones or those taken with flash you see that even with a bright skin colour one still has darker shades where shadow falls. Also you only use 2 of your shades for real shading, the rest is mainly used for outlining.

kvetacek -I should use a darker shade to pull the fingers away and accentuate the knuckles but then I'm sure the top part.

philipptr-Thank you for the comment, especially for the skin contrast issue, I agree with it. I stayed away from the darker shades mainly because I don't like my choices for them. Picking a good Asian-ish pallet wish shades that look like skin and not mud has been a challenge. If you have any recommendations on how to handle that sort of thing, I'd greatly welcome them.

I think the right (his left) hand seems a bit pillow-ish. :x

Good job though! :)

The pose seems pretty unnatural, apart from how he is holding the left sword he is also leaning forward and has rather weird feet.

Also why didnt you use any darker shades for the skin? With this small range of tones it looks very flat and doesnt show the actual volume properly