I think I understand what banding is now but I don't see how it looks bad, or how to make it look better.  I made a basic attempt to fix the "K," but as you can see it doesn't look any better.

Firstly, thanks for more continuing to take time to explain this to me.

Now, if I were going to fix the banding, let's say the banding in the letters (though there is banding elsewhere as well, I'm sure), would I add more intermediate colors in there to smooth it out? Or would I dot each shade into the next like I did the crown face? Or add intermediate colors into the "corners"? Or what?

I looked up that banding link you posted and I couldn't make heads or tails of it.  The examples of banding given looked totally fine to me and I couldn't understand what they even meant by their definition of "banding."

I guess pixel art is beyond me.  Thanks for the advice though.

Control?  What is supposed to be controlled?  I'm not understanding.

I did this by hand.

I don't know what about it looks to be done automatically.

There is tons of artwork on this site that is even WAY more detailed than this.

And also, it was made in Paint, all except the transparent background.

How do you mean, "random, scratchy pixel placement"?  Like, the face of the crown's metal being randomly speckled?  That was my attempt at belnding the shades together.  First I made rays of increasing/decreasing brightness up and down the crown's face, then I speckled each color into the next color by hand.  I thought that's how it was supposed to be done.

Nice pic.  But that's really weird.  I made a Mt. Dew can and submitted it, and now i see the comments, and someone is saying to do a Mt. Dew can.

I see.  Thanks.

Where do you see that it says 97 colors?  And on the Red Velvet Cake pic, people were saying 2435 colors.  How do you know?  Where does it say?

Yes, it's definitely Digitamamon.  Nice pic.  Yeah, I saw your WarGreymon and Flamedramon, Razman.  Not bad either.

Great job!  I used to love Digimon.  Still have a ton of cards and 1-inch figures.