Some Custom Sprites

[Cobalt Blue]

your main problem was not using shading and/or more shades per color. it was that basically, your shading was completely random and wasn't helping define an shape in particular. you were basically trying to cluster several small details with colors that had barely little to no detail at all, w/o a light surce or anything too really put a diference between an arm and a chest. for a sprite of that size, definition is king. adding more and more shades would ultimately make it way more blurry and way more undetailed and unreadable as well.

selfquoting to remind that problem wasn't amount of colors or tones used but rather randomly placed shades that didn't help define the shape of the part in question and was overdone with massive colors in such a small room that end being messy. same thing that happened with your example, in wich you're just focused on the "pattern" the gradient should follow instead of focused on using the shade to actually give volume to the object to help read it as a three dimensional element(as it is now, that thing has no shap at all and its just a flat object with a gradient on it)

also, some elements of the character desing itself didn't help to define shapes either as most were quite confusing in terms or readbility, so adding to the already overdone shading and messy lighting issues already makes it even hard and blurry to read. if you look carefully at some of the actualy game sprites, they do sport rather simplistic and midly saturated colors and shades in order to maximize their readbility(in some cases even ignoring a lightsource). and in most cases to the armor and "painted" parts of each reploid's armor isnt really shinny at all(X and Zero's armors have no metallic shading at all, for example). to be honest, i wouldn't say that such sprites use a metalic shading at all, it looks closer to a cellshading instead(saving metal-shaded elements to specific bodyparts). and no, his wasnt anywhere near being readable as being metallic.

also, i'd like to point one specific point: as i said before, for sprites of such size readbility and definition is king. in your example you have plenty room to add as many shaded as posble in order to make it more smooth(in fact, you do have to, since its size demands it). however, for the chest plate in thes aid sprite for example, adding more than two(or even three colors) would totally be unnecesary as the area you had would barely leave room to add such amount of colors.

finally, if you check the original colors used, you'll notice that most of them blend together as they all lack contrast and rather look dark and end merging with the outline in some cases, while zones such as the hands and feet have an extreme contrast with the rest of the armor poping out more than they should, breaking the whole image and drawing the viewer's attention towards them. like putting a soap in a buckle full of coal.

in a nutcase, it doesnt need to be "blurry" andn shouldn't never be like that unless speciic context demands it. in sprites of such size, smoothness comes from the readbility and definition of each one of the features present in the character. and that comes from a wise selection of colors and proper shading acording to the size of the sprite.