Let me start by saying that I consider myself pretty new to spriting. I did a few things to it that I thought might help. And I'll introduce a few concepts that I learned recently that made a big difference to me.



- I like to have more contrast in my color ramps, so I made the bright colors brighter and the dark colors darker.
- I have no idea why this works, but as my colors get darker, I like to slightly shift hues to make them redder. It might be because colors act more like this in real life. But I think it also works because it adds more contrast between the different shades.
- To make my sprites appear more 3d, I like to shade my outlines as well. You don't have to do this, I just wanted to see if it would work here.

Now this hint may be counter-intuitive, but I removed a lot of detail from the shirt and the pants, and instead focused on simple shading. To me, it ended up looking cleaner from far away. And doing so let's me emphasize lighter regions and darker regions.

Anyway, I still have a lot to learn myself. But these are the things I wish I knew when I started spriting, so maybe they'll help you.

You clearly cared enough to try to do it yourself so I suggest you move this to WIP and get some tips on how to make it better yourself.  If you learn how to sprite yourself it opens up all kinds of new ideas you can do in your games.  Either way best of luck!