The sprite render seems as if its just been aded to an already made background. There are no signs of blending the sprite focal in either.
Providing you made the background yourself the whole tag may look a lot better without the sprite at all.
Love the background, sprite and colours, only problem i see is that, theres a lot going on on the right and my eye is drawn to that area rather than the sprite
2nd version is much better it still looks as if it need blending a little more but its a big improvement on the 1st.
Also after seeing the original background I can see you've done quite a bit to give it those awesome looking colours.
Great Job.