Let's beat a dead horse.

[Cobalt Blue]

http://neuropod.net/imagehost/uploads/3e...a86dbb.jpg

This is how his mark is supposed to be. If you have good, useful advice to give regarding how to reduce it even more without making it unrecognizable, I'm all ears.

easy.

anyone who knows the character(basically, anyone who would be interested in this sprite) would recognize that as part of the character's trait. that already gives you more freedom to work with simpler details that are rather abstract.

thats how early nes sprites worked: the cover gave you all the info on how your character looked like in detail, while the in game sprites were worked to be readable once you had that basic background info.

same goes for cutscenes