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[Torchkas]

Which one do you prefer?
Do you like making your gradients by dithering the fuck out of everything?
Do you prefer to add extra colors to your work so that it looks like a Picasso painting?

Discuss.

[Cobralad]

The problem with dithering is that it was intended to make more colors on blurry crt. It wont work with super-lowres art.
Outside of that it will only work to cheat your eye in higher resolutions, like here:

[WaywardEmcee]

I only bother dithering if there's some reason I'm sticking to a specific color pallet. Outside of that I see absolutely no reason not use gradients. It looks better, less stressful on the eyes, and implements faster. We're not running on color restricted machines anymore >.>

[Alevice]

Tell that to the dither queen: http://www.pixeljoint.com/p/16384.htm

[Torchkas]

I just looked through that and I think what you're saying is interesting. She only seems to be using dithering for added texture with certain materials. Like this. She, however, doesn't do it on things that are perceived to have shine. Like this one.
The reason I'm asking these questions is because I'm really uncertain if mixing dithered and undithered objects completely ruins the flow in artstyle you're going for. There are probably examples of them not clashing with each other, but I have yet to see them. The examples I showed seem to come from completely different artists to me.

[joseph ¯\_(ツ)_/¯]

I would use a banded, low res gradient over a dither in most cases.

Dithering means sacrificing a significant amount of the resolution you have to define forms for the purpose of conveying a shade of color. You also usually kinda need some space for the dithered tone, if it's not large enough or surrounded by too many other complex shapes the pixels making up your dither pattern are just gonna look like messy/choppy noise.

It's a totally viable technique and works wonders in some pieces -- just, unless you're obsessed with the idea of dithering or find it really fun and rewarding it's probably best to use other methods, even in the case of fairly restricted palettes.

[Sik]

By general rule, for small gradients it's usually better to just do the steps as-is, while for large gradients (as in large images) it's better to do both (e.g. do a gradient but use dithering between the steps).

The problem with dithering is that it was intended to make more colors on blurry crt.

PC CRTs were never blurry unless you count the very early CGA ones (which weren't really used aside from playing Sierra games because text mode was practically unreadable). The bluriness didn't come from the CRT, it came from using NTSC/PAL signals instead of raw RGB (it was a side effect of trying to merge and then later separate again the components with cheap hardware, with all the issues you'd expect from that).

[skaz]

I personally like to keep my color count verry low, and I also work with relatively small sprites. Dithering is more a tool I use to create crisp textures like rock, fur or dino skin for example.