Here's an edit by me:
Hopefully that'll help. As you can see, I changed the colors to be more interesting, added shading, lighting, changed the size, arms, hair, and feet around, and played with borders a bit to get a better-looking sprite. I also changed the eye a little bit.
Note, I did this from your first version, not your new, shaded version, but hopefully it won't make a difference as I didn't really do what you did in your shaded version.