The black background serves this purpose: they were meant to be seen on a black background, and so they look bad on the default PixelJoint background color.
These are all the permanent upgrade items that are currently in Rendezvous Delano, a Nintendo DS game I'm making. (The rest of this text is the same as will be in all Rendezvous Delano submissions.) This game is a shoot-em-up with Metroid elements such as exploration...and a bunch of Metroid upgrades, and the player is Samus's ship.
Here is a video I recorded 6 days after I started making it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63OUeKeFs3M
And if you wish to download it, the current alpha version (which is a good bit more advanced than that video and features a complete first level) is available here: http://dpmm.110mb.com/temp/RendezvousDelano.zip | 
Hmm, perhaps. The "propeller" is actually a weapon charging animation. Luckily, I can slow down the specific animations in-game to whatever rate I want!