I spent some time redesigning the player character and went through a lot of iterations before I ended up with a shape that I'm happy with:

Drawing pixel art for Arq is definitely a learning experience, and I'm still very far from being a skilled pixel artist. One of the requirements I have for the player character is that parts of the sprite can be replaced to show what type of armor the character is wearing etc.

It should also be possible to animate different parts of the sprite separately. For now I'm sticking with the simple jumping animation instead of a detailed walking animation though.