@Metaru: Well I definitely take that as a compliment :D although at first I had no idea what you were talking about. Funny how he and I have the same first name too...

@ev149: Thanks, the base sprite took me about an hour. That was one heck of a fun hour.  And he took like a week to program...

Cool, nice use of shading and texture.  I like it alot!

@r1k: that looks delicious... O.o

People keep telling me it looks just like Ballos from Cave Story...

for a second i though it was squirrelsquid

 HUYA STARMIE

he reminds me of pineapple upside down cake

http://delightfullyglutenfree.files.wordpress.com/2008/04/cake-pineapple-upside-down.jpg

but in all seriousness thats pretty awesome.

 Ooh, I like that idea a lot. I may also do that for one of the outer ring segments. Especially considering that that's the frame right before it completely breaks. Thanks :)

 On the very last frame, take a chunk from the ruby center and offset it out 1 or 2 pixels.  This will make it look more like it has shattered more forcefully and starting to really come apart.