Quote - > Quote - The people I'm working for have no concept of art or anything. They are just the average joe you know?  Do you think it could work commercially?   Please be honest!

Heh, the people with 'no concept of art or anything' are the scariest people you can do work for, since they usually have too high or too low an expectation from CG. ie they may be happy with a few cubes in a blank room or they may be expecting a 'Shrek' from you :p But i think you're getting to a reasonable level of quality with your latest tweaks.

Personally i like the cyan one as it has a much more interesting color theme then the others and the the cool backgrounds/lighting serve to enhance your pink/orange character. In the last one, everything is so orange that your character is getting lost. In any case, also get rid of that purple clock hand in the back. It's color is an instant magnet to the eye, and it quickly takes away the focus from your character.

Also one important thing to look for if youre creating work for others is to follow standard camera/shot framing as outlined here:

http://www.mediacollege.com/video/shots/

Since everyone regularly sees these kind of shots in film and TV, we kinda expect them in everything. In this case you should be going for a mid shot (ie waist to head) or a wide shot (foot to head) Your character right now is in the middle of the 2 shots and thus looks unbalanced/cramped.

Finally (like someone already pointed out) from composition point of view, you should never place anything in the dead middle of your frame like your character is now. Instead move him to the left. The idea is that there should always be more space in the portion where the character is looking then the back of their head. This way the eye gets more room to wander around and it makes your work look more inviting.

That link you provided for the camera shots puts everything into perspective.  Big help.  I'm going to re-render this image with a bunch of tweaks from what you guys have just suggested.  I hope this thread helps out others in the future, there is a lot of good information in it.