Go ahead and open this up in paint.net. Because as I said the units were still blurred I just took one and copied it to another image.
I cleared it up and the first thing I did was, I changed the background, you shouldn't work on such a dark background because it will change your perspective of colors.
Step two is I googled a reference image of a peasant, because it seemed like a good starting point.
I chose a natural color for his clothes and using it I gave him a more natural pose. I deleted a few pixels from the arms and I played around with the head and eyes.
Your colors are saturated up to 100% and that gives them an unnatural look, so try to desaturate them a bit. I played around with different clothes parts and gave him a skirt and a hat of the same color. I decided that a sword isn't a peasant thing and gave him a hoe (though this is just my preference and not important).
As you can see I used a total of five colors for the guy not counting his weapon and it looks nice but it's simple (by the way it's a good idea to keep a color palette on the side).
So here is another important PW rule: "keep it simple silly" (KISS).
Now what I would like you to do is play around with different colors and unit positions, maybe give them a little running pose. Leave the big cthulu for now and come back to it when you are feeling confident in creating smaller dudes and 25px dudes, because they will be the base of your army and are the best starting point.
Edit: By the way here is how I work in Paint.net:
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Topic: Picture Wars, WIP/General thread (Read 15698 times)