The hair definitely is my least favorite part of the sprite, and I think your suggestion is a good one. Thank you, I will definitely keep that in mind on my second pass.

As for light source, I still think I'm going to go for a central light source. The sprites from Seiken Densetsu 3 employed that sort of shading and it worked out really well there, and those are the sprites I'm using as my source inspiration.

Ah, no. My previous pixel art has mostly been a bunch of mocks for games that never came to be. I'm working with an actual team and actual insentive this time around to make a game a reality though... and it may even be good! Keep a look out for it. I'll be posting most of the art I do for it here for critiques.

Is this for the same game you were doing here? http://pixeljoint.com/pixelart/49075.htm

I think if you flip the side views left/right, it'd still look fine even if the front/back views have non-frontal lighting. The side lighting makes the forms read clearly, so I think you should keep it.

The hair movement seems odd. If you want to animate the hair, I think a slight vertical bounce would look more dynamic and natural than small sections moving side to side.