I was wondering... X)  I'm happy to have been the inspiration for your awesome work. <3

 Sudden subconscious inspiration discovery time! I'm now pretty much certain this is what inspired me to make that space Viking ship thing :D

Thank you. ^_^  I'm going to be trying a couple different edits of the purple out tonight to see what looks good.  What would y'all think about adding a sea serpent?

Edit:  Final version.  Still not satisfied, but I can't do anymore right now so this'll have to be it.

Nice color choice, the dark patch is somehow strange, too. Everything else is so smooth and detailed.

Understandable, what would you suggest be added if I were to make that area underwater?  : )

 The dark patches bother me. They look like shadows, but I can't see what of.  If instead of the shadow you could make the bottom half look like it's under water, that might work?  Tanuki's edit works well to.

I do love the colours.

Thanks Tanuki!  That wasn't what I had in my head when I imagined your description, so it's a good thing you drew this. : )  Those waves do make sense.  I'm not sure if you thought there were supposed to be waves in that direction because of what's happening with the water at the prow, but that's just the displaced water from the boat's forward movement.  I'll work on making those changes tomorrow- I'll be going to sleep before 4:30am for the first time in a month.

Show - You make really good sense.  ^_^  

I know what you mean about how reflections are usually quite saturated IRL.  The way I see it, because pixel art is of a much lower resolution than, well, pretty much anything else we look at, it is necessary to dilute a colour with surrounding colours when it takes up less than one pixel's worth of space in the image.  Um, I don't know if I'm being clear, let me know if you need a visual example.

It's a bit rough since I'm laying in bed with a laptop track pad, but this is sort of what I'm thinking- link

Notice how I tried to make the waves all follow about the same direction... actually that's a lie, it just happened on accident. I guess I kept moving my finger on the track pad in the same direction. But that's probably how the waves should be, right? Something like that. I think it could use even more of the dark bands between waves though, if you decide to do this kind of thing.

If you changed anything in the past half hour or so I probably used an old version for this edit.

Sounds like a good plan; the thought crossed my mind a couple times but I never did anything with it.  I'm worried a bit about toning down the colors from the fire reflection since those irl always seem saturated. 

Guess I'll head off to fiddle with the reflection ramps. : )

Edited!  Now I just have to figure out that dark bands thing.

if you just get rid of the moon's reflection it might create an uncanny effect where it looks like something is missing

I'm thinking you could make the reflections more subtle.  What I mean is, think about what that blue would look like if it were to intermingle with the white light coming from the moon or the orangish colour from the fire, as opposed to having the reflections being pretty much the same colour.  You could try making colour ramps between those colours and the blue, and maybe play around with that for something that "pops" a little less.  Don't take my word for it, though, see for yourself whether that works or not.

The only breakthrough was in knowing what I wanted and finding someone else who employed it to mimic. ;D  As I added the colors to my palette individually, eyeballing the shades, I did learn a bit about how a good ramp is built. 

Do you think just getting rid of the moon's reflection would result in a happy middle ground?

Thank you for the feedback!  I suck at drawing water, pixellated or not, to tell ya the truth. ^_^'  Could you do a paint drawing of what you mean?  Like, where you think darker bands should be?  Nothing pretty, just arrows or something. 

I like it less since I added the reflections to the water. *sighs*

I'd really like to help you out with a critique, but nothing really comes to mind, although I agree with what tanuki is saying.  however, I'm really appreciating the colours here, as well as the composition.  i think it's a very noticeable improvement from some of the other stuff I'm seeing in your gallery.  Did you have a breakthrough with colour theory that you'd like to share?

edit: and I think I agree with you, the version you posted in the WIP thread appealed to me more than it does now that there are reflections in the water.  although I like that you are going for realistic effects.

I think the highlights in the water are much too dense, considering the dark patch at the bottom. Since the dark patch has to be there, I think the highlights should be reduced a bit and have some dark bands between them.