I’d recommend using cycles to render or lowering the roughness on the character and adding ambient occlusion. I’d also recommend messing with a few different HDRIs because the yellow temperature and strength on that one ruins the lighting.
There is definitely an improvement on the second one, it’s more clear and precise. My only concern is the lack of Ambient occlusion on the body of the character. The left side of the head is really bright because of this. This would also make the top of the hair blend in more naturally in front of the background.
Another pet peeve of mine from the GFX is the lack of color variation. It feels kind of plain and bland with just one color. I recommend changing the brightness of some parts of the GFX to a brighter red.
The design has those small improvements, I see you worked on your lighting a bit to have a more realistic feel to it. I would say try decreasing the close lighting shining on the side of the characters face, you could also include a background that matches the tones on the top shirt.
Despite not much lacking I would say for one try fading out the white outline, shadow around the entire character to make it blend in with the background, what you have so far doesn’t look bad. Alternatively, you could throw in a background that reflect that warm lighting and reflection, to increase the quality of the design.