She needs more contrast. It's hard to tell if there's any light source at all. Actually, for characters you shouldn't have a hard light source as it would look weird if the background had a source from a different location or if the character sprite reversed. you want to have the appearance of
some light source but don't make it very pronounced.
Anatomy Reference:
Your anatomy isn't too bad, but the shoulders would set back and slightly down more and her breasts would be slightly lower. She also seems to have a hump in her back. I suppose you're trying to draw the shoulder region? In that case that hump would start right at the top of the shoulders and end about half-way down the triceps. It wouldn't look nearly that pronounced either. In fact, you may not realistically be able to see it at that size. Eyes are set in the center of the human head, one pixel down and they would be perfect. Her head needs to set a little more forward. Again, one pixel would be good.
A little tip is that contrast can give the illusion of depth. Things farther away tend to look darker and nearer things are lighter.
I made a really quick edit for you. I hope you don't mind:
I pushed the shoulders back, gave the arms a more natural resting spot, upped the contrast, put the head forward one pixel, moved the eyes down one pixel, added some red in the skin tone and also lowered the saturation a bit. moved the feet apart, and made her lower body a tiny bit thicker. She looks slightly turned more toward the camera to give her a more natural look. You almost never see anyone directly from the side.
Noticed how I put dark colors behind the light colors to bring then out more, specifically where the sleeve of the coat is and where the coat hangs over her blouse.
Another thing about colors:
- shadows tend to be lower in saturation the darker they are. They also tend to be purpler
- highlights tend to be higher in saturation the lighter they are. They also tend to be yellower.
For example, the colors in a plant are green right? Well they actually tend to scale from yellow to green. A plant's colors MIGHT have these saturations and hues in it:
That is a stupidly gross oversimplification. Light isn't that simple and it depends on multiple factors such at the light source intensity and texture of the object, etc, but it's how color
tends to scale.
And I'll warn you that I'm not that great of an artist. These are just things I've kind of picked up on so take everything I say with a grain of salt.
Edit: Oh yeah, your background is looking a lot better.
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