Good start

It's probably better if you try to do eyes and shades yourself. There are some good tutorials on here in the FAQ threads, check those out. You'll learn more by experimenting rather than having someone say "put some shade where his hair meets his forehead".

Estimated time of arrival: eyes?

Legs are way too small  for the torso and head, they’re like half the length of the arms, in fact. The palette used on the face feels dead, use more saturation, human skin should have life. The shading on the hair is basically a banded gradient and doesn’t conform to the actual shape of the hair or cranium beneath. He needs a neck, unless that’s a turtleneck tshirt. Pants are too dark, use one of the lighter blues and axe the others, the shading here makes no sense either. Shirt is likewise shaded without any rhyme or reason I can spot, keep in mind the shapes of the 3d forms you’re trying to depict, break them into planes if you have to.

What kind of game is this? If it’s a side-scroller, your character might have some trouble walking to the side, since he’s facing us.

My advice: forget the shirt, jeans, belt, hair, and color right now. Get a readable sprite outline with believable proportions first, then move on to the other stuff.

Thanks for the criticism, like I said I'm a fairly crap artist and it really helps. That edit that onek posted looks really cool.

I've started again, for reference the game is hopefully going to be set out like a top down rpg, well not GTA style top down, more FFVI top down but with a higher pixel count.

I'm really struggling to get that perspective though, it just seems to always look like the character is looking straight out of the picture. I tried to correct it in my 2nd go but it kind of just looks like a beret rather than the policeman's cap I was going for.

Anyway here's my two outlines, hope they show a bit more promise than my first effort.