The first thing I did was moved the shoulders. You had no defined neck, and it makes the base look like a hunchback. Also, your shading/palette are off. The tone on your base was yellow, and I don't personally like working with that shade. So if you like yellowishness, fine. But still, your palette doesn't contrast enough. I would suggest making the shadow color darker, and a highlight color.
On shading, you didn't really do much(except a bit of pillow shading). When you're doing any pixel art, you should have a light source(as in a direction the light comes from). Most people choose Northeast as a light source. From there, it's really just a matter of figuring out how the light reflects off of the body.
I kind of rushed it(so it looks sloppyish), but this is only to help you get the gist of what needs to happen to make it look decent.
The first thing I did was moved the shoulders. You had no defined neck, and it makes the base look like a hunchback. Also, your shading/palette are off. The tone on your base was yellow, and I don't personally like working with that shade. So if you like yellowishness, fine. But still, your palette doesn't contrast enough. I would suggest making the shadow color darker, and a highlight color.
On shading, you didn't really do much(except a bit of pillow shading). When you're doing any pixel art, you should have a light source(as in a direction the light comes from). Most people choose Northeast as a light source. From there, it's really just a matter of figuring out how the light reflects off of the body.
I kind of rushed it(so it looks sloppyish), but this is only to help you get the gist of what needs to happen to make it look decent.