I know all too well what it is to make something that looks jarring because it looks "too good" compared to the rest of the game, and then facing Sophie's choice between "rework ALL the other art in the game" and "make the one thing WORSE-looking". :/
In my very limited experience, it's best to delay this choice as much as possible, because it tends to happen that as you gain expertise, you end up revising your old sprites anyway. The oldest sprite in my game went through this many revisions:
Of course your expertise level is lightyears from mine, which gives me a lot more space to improve quickly; I can't think of pixel art becoming much better than what you already have, so this advice might not be useful at all. :D
Oooh, this is very interesting, and something even I could make use of. I really need to devote time looking into these tutorials and the ones you sent me; I keep putting it off because I feel my own skills aren't (yet) at the level where they might help, but this is a fine example of something anyone of any skill level can apply. Thanks a lot!
You're clearly very knowledgeable about this stuff, would you recommend a specific palette? I'm using DB32 for my game and it improved its look immensely. Although at this point changing everything to any other would probably be a huge pain in the ass...