thanks caiys
yeah we have a sort of lantern-light flickery overlay thingy which i think was the main culprit for the muddy effect you're talking about- especially when combined with the silly mistakes i made with video capture and editing... most of the video files ended up compressed many times which made matters worse
i've tried a different technique for lantern effect and i'm much happier with the results- maybe i'll post some screenshots for comparison and feedback some time
i've also been working a lot on colors for palletizing monsters and effects- lots of stuff went in so quickly when we were focused on gameplay and i hadn't considered the color composition we'd get when the pieces came together ingame, so there are some pretty garish colors in the vid too
i'm using photoshop for pixel art and animation- i tried some more specialized tools, but ended up going with the environment i was most comfortable in. i had to mess around for a while to find a good workflow