i love this. Nice to see a different style.

this is awesome! it's always cool to find someone who likes rubyquest. such a good comic.

Thank you!

 The hand looks great 

I've made it transparent. Thank you for pointing out those things! I'm familiar with those terms but I've still got a lot to learn, but that's why I'm here.

 Yep, should be fine. I would recommend working smaller in the future in order to better learn the fundamentals of pixel art, but as-is the piece seems perfectly acceptable.

I had feeling I'd do something wrong with my first submission! If I were to either remove the background and make it transparent, or do something else for the background would it be acceptable?

 Well since you mentioned it, the background is what we call oekaki, which means it's too sketchy and not controlled enough for pure pixel art. The character itself is fine, maybe a bit larger than typical and thus lacking in pixel polish (banding, jaggies, etc), but by itself is gallery-acceptable. There's. Tutorial in our resources/support forum if any of the above terms are unfamiliar.