yeah I had read somewhere that dithering can be hard to master and is rarely used right. I have a smaller version of this sprite (32x32) that will be used "in game", This was mostly just practice. I can understand why its better to try to avoid dithering. being consistant in an animation is hard enough with out trying to keep track of all those patterns as they move.
Be careful with using dithering on sprites that will be animated...its a pain and never looks good in the end. Practicing and mastering dithering is great but on sprites its not the wisest move :)
Exactly. Its controlling the patterns that makes dithering in sprites problematic.