Cute *--*

 Thank you everyone for all the support! I'm really flattered.

I'll keep at it :)

Very cool character design here!

faved

First? Really nice. Can't wait to see more from you. :)

It takes some years to pixel like this, kudos.

This is cute pixelling.

cure did the right thing =)

 Keep it up. I'm really impressed, I wish my first was nearly as good as this.

 Thanks a bunch. I kept the BG shading light for fear of jaggies and having to add more colours, but maybe I'd be able to use an already made darker color for AA if I gave it more contrast like in your edit. It certainly gives it more depth!

This is awesome for a first piece, great work!  I'd suggest maybe messing around a little with those two blue-green background colours.  You can definitely add a bit of contrast between the two.  Right now I feel like their values are a little too similar to some of the shading on the rat and her outfit, so it almost looks like she is melting into the background.  Here's an example of what I mean:  http://i.imgur.com/xJRzm.png

I'm kind of braindead right now though, so my example is poor.  perhaps somebody else will help out.

turned out great, especially for your first go. so you'd better keep pixellin', or else!