I guess I could have said what DW said.... His advise is really good. Give it a shot and see what happens.

I see what JR is talking about. To fix the snake issue, the problem lies in it's shadows. They start out being on the right side of the Snake,(Snake's Left) and twist with the snake to be under it around her head then back again to the (Snake) left around her arm. This,Is where I think you may have cut some of the shadowed body by mistake,giving it the Skinny look.

The Face and hand look out of focus because,going out on a limb and asking if the skin was painted like you used to? Instead of Painting it, work with the program's Hue/Saturation, Brightness/Contrast, Vibrancy etc to see if that can help you retain the sharpness of the model. Or maybe use a Model that has close to the Hair color you want to use for the Image.

If not,then may I suggest after removing the image from the background,remove the halo effect using a very soft setting on the eraser tool? this will remove the halow hile at the same time, blending the edges of the hair to the background.

One thing (in my opinion) that could help bring the character upfront as the focus of the image, Give the snake a series of motion blur to indicate it is striking at the viewer

Keep up the work. you improve with piece you do

This one would be cool... but... the snake goes from skinny to fat. Snakes don't do that. And the white outline in her hair could have been fixed easy with a black paint brush. Her face is also out of focus. The little details keep your stuff from being really good.

Keep it up. You have made huge leaps in you maniping!