this is fantastic actually

I really like the design going on here, and the face is really cute.  The freckle/beauty/cancer-mark is adorable.

Hard to say specifically without knowing your workflow, but Photoshop's lack of good indexed palette support is usually to blame for situations like this. You might want to try some software made specifically for pixel art, like GrafX2. Not saying Photoshop can't be used for PA--I used it for quite a while--it's just that it's really easy to end up with "dirty" images like this if you're not super careful.

Thank you for the comments, much appreciated.

@Hatch: sorry about that transparency mess - I guess I started with the wrong foot in Photoshop, which clearly isn't the most apt software for minimal pixel art. Do you have any idea how the three different palette entries appeared in the transparency?

Nice entry; I really like this one.

This is still not technically correct because you're using three different palette entries for transparency, but it's correct in spirit (we just lump all trans palette entries into one). Not a problem really, it's fine for the challenge. Just wanted to let you know.

I love the style!

hooray!  Really like this entry, one of the only with transparency

Glad you made it. =)

 Yes, every aspect of it could be better - just not having the time this week =(

Thank you for the photoshop hint.

I think the AA could be better, but overall very nice.

The third quarter is good this time!

The others are still a bit off:

    Top left - 3
    Top right - 5
    Bottom left - 5
    Bottom right - 10

In Photoshop: Image > Mode > Index Color... here it should say something like "Colors: 8", this only counts colours in the whole image though, so if you want to see the colours in each quarter you'll have to crop each section and then check the colours. Or you can keep resubmitting and hope it will be correct :P

Edit: sorry, this time was actually in fact correct
 

 oh gosh, I started with the wrong foot in photoshop and now takes me longer to fix it than it took me to draw it =)

ok - let's see now =) and thank you for caring!

BTW is there a tool in Photoshop to count/analyse colours?

Still off:

    Top left - 3
    Top right - 4
    Bottom left - 6
    Bottom right - 9

You seem to have a lot of hidden colours floating around that are very similar to other colours. You still have about 12 hours to fix this btw.