I follow, thanks for the nice critique, prepares me way better than my art classes "I don't like this...." "I don't like that..." will remember those for the portrait I'm working on :]

D'aww, I'm glad you found happiness. =)

Your story was quite heart warming and I can relate to the rut you were in before your friends came along ^__^

Anyway, on the topic of your picture,

Although this piece made me smile, There are a few common pitfalls associated with it that you may not like to hear. So please try not to be offended with the following things I am about to divulge.

To be blunt and get straight to the point, your piece borderlines on Oekaki.

Strict pixel art (which is enforced here at PJ) is the art form in which pixels are placed strategically

"What's important is that the pixel artist has control of the image at the level of the single pixel"
~Cure

Now, although in the draft stage, free-flow style drawing is normal (and.. kinda just the way you do it..) a picture left in this stage is not pixel art. That isn't to say that pictures simply drawn in mspaint aren't GOOD, it just means the picture doesn't fall into the category of a certain type.

It is plain to see that you have not tried to smooth out any/many of your lines as there are a lot of points in your picture that contain jaggies(jagged edges). The monsters shoulder, hat, hat tastle and eyes for example have many jaggies and suggest a free-flow drawn line.

You seem to have the right kind of idea about pixelling because the girls eyes (and a few other small spots) have intricately placed pixels that seem to suggest care has been used,

but the rest of the picture seems to suggest you just drew it and left it.

To understand what i'm talking about please click this link and read/study this tutorial written by one of the users here at PJ:

Please scroll down (just a little) to the picture of the goofy guy wearing a suit next to a tree and read the description above it about Oekaki vs Pixel Art 

Then after reading that, scroll down to the picture with the purple background with just a few black lines drawn on it and read the description above that to learn more about jaggies.

 http://www.pixeljoint.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=11299

I don't think you should focus on AA at the moment and should try to work on cleaning your line art instead. As a lot of the time it's very important to have smooth crisp lines, especially when working with pictures this small.

I think 30 colours is a BIT too much for what you've got here, I counted about 20 and have no idea where the other 10 came from. try to keep a pallette on the piece (and remove it later when you're close to finishing) so you don't keep selecting similar colours and can see contrasts when you put colours next to each other (place the colour blobs next to each other to make  a gradient, it'll help when selecting colours on how dark you need something to be or how a colour looks next to another one not that that's an issue with this piece.)

All that being said, don't sweat it too much, I liked your picture anyway. I think you're very imaginative, keep at it and good luck in your future endeavours =)

 Gotta love the results of submitting something the day/day before a challenge :I

 Thanks :]

I really like your story on the inspiration for the piece