Yeah this is pretty old but I've updated it ( still unfinished tho). My newer sprites got the palette removed :D

I dont think it is necessary to include the palette inside the piece, as it can be seen in the sprite itself

I also changed some of the colours to look more realistic and added a palette to each section on my re-work.

To your re-work:

Wow really great improvement! The anatomy and volume of the character is much better here and also more realistic than my re-work (I think I stylised mine too much). I think that you could get away with adding fewer lines on the chest piece as there's a bit of an issue with banding on the chest / side of the character and instead focus more on showing where the light is hitting it and casting shadows on the breastplate to show the detail.

It's definitely getting better though, keep it up! I think you should post your re-work here on PJ instead of the current sprite even if the shield isn't finished yet. I'm not sure what you could do for the shield, just look at some good reference images to see how light is reflected and have a go.

This is my rework, I reshaped it into a slightly bigger size, I also use much less colour ( although I'm still not very happy with it) and I'm still not sure how to colour the shield, but I think it's better overall. What do you think?
 

No problemo! I think that a lot of beginners get bogged down in trying to add loads and loads of detial when it's better if it's kept simple. I'd like to see some sprites from you that just reach step 2 in my process that have a good base that can be added to.

Good luck improving!

Awesome work man, very detailed. I'll use your doccument and the link to improve this sprite and my future sprite. Thank you so much :D

I've posted my re-work here along with some writing about it.

If you have any questions or queries what so ever please just ask me!

Picking colours was always my biggest pitfall as a beginner and I still have trouble with it now really. I'll try and make a re-worked sprite but it might take a while (a day or two) and I'll record my steps I go through 

drawing people is not my strongest point though so don't expect anything amazing.

Yes please make an edit, I could definitely learn from you. The contrast part / color choice is probably my biggest problem right now, I'd like to see how you handle it :D

For the image in the link:

That's a good improvement, well done! Maybe adding more contrast between your colours would be the next step. When looking at the preview image it can be quite difficult to identify the different parts of the character. For instance the sword and the helmet look too similar and so it's hard to tell them apart when looking at it. You'd add more contrast by having a wider variety of hue, saturation and lightness in your colour ramps as a lot of the colours here are all similar gray tones.

A good technique for some people is to keep all of the colours greyscale during the creation process to make sure you get the right contrast between the colours before adding the hue and saturation at the end of the process.

I'd also change the pose by moving the left leg to the right a bit so he doesn't look so front heavy like he could fall over.

If it's alright, I'd be more than happy to edit your sprite and send it back for you to study the changes I make. Just let me know if it's okay.

http://imgur.com/elc7eeU.png

I think you may be able to upload it to a site like imgur and then paste the link in the comments but don't quote me on that.

Alternatively you can edit your pixelart submission and just change the file to the new one (make sure the new file doesn't have the same name as the original upload otherwise it won't update it to the newest one).

I saw this on Pixlation earlier! One of the major issues with this piece is that you're using way too many colours that all have very little contrast.

I'd recommend trying to redraw the sprite just using around 3 colours to block fill in areas, don't worry about shading yet, to clearly define different areas of your sprite.

For example, colouring in the knights cape in blue and anything metal (like his armour and shield) in with a grey.

Then as you need to add shading, add one colour to a ramp and then use that to shade as much as you can until you NEED to add another. It's recommended that you keep your colour count low so that your artwork is readable and *nice* looking.

Here is a thread from the forums that has loads of really great advice and techinques from the pros of Pixelart: http://pixeljoint.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=10695