E-Man's Sprite R & D

[Gors]

i got extremely bored after reading the first paragraph of your post

you talk too much for something as small as this. While you're trying to "mimic" M&L 4's shading style, you really don't need all those shades because you aren't going to animate it smoothly. The official sprites has many shades because that way you can add a lot of antialiasing and thus helping in the smoothening of the sprite.

your mushroom is weird because the 'face' is placed forward instead of being in the middle, like a mushroom would be. Therefore it looks more like a Toad than a shroom. Also because of that, the face looks like another sprite than a single entity because the cap should cast a shadow on it, but it isn't.



here's my take on it, light coming from top right. The direction of your shading doesn't matter as long as all other sprites follow it. There is no 'correct' direction the light comes, therefore you shouldn't be hellbent on shading the sprite from all possible sides like you are doing. Adding in-between colors also don't matter if you are going to pick way too similar colors. If that's the case, increase the contrast and work well with what you have.