No of course not. You don't even have to do pixel art at all. But if you are doing pixel art, one of its two most prominent features is the use of a limited palette (the other one being manual pixel placement). If you had worked with a limited palette, you'd understand how it affects your art dramatically.
That's a style choice and not something you have to follow
That's... really not how palettes work. When you make a sprite set for a game you especially try to reuse the same colors for consistency.
278 colors between 29 sprites, that averages out to about 9 colors per sprite, if you know what you're doing then that's alright for a palette.
Stellar work btw Howl
I don't really care for color limitations, as long as it looks good! But it sure would be interesting to see a version of this with a limited color palette. Just to compare. I like these food sprites!
This would benefit a lot from a palette management.
I didn't use a palette for this so even though the colours look similar across different sprites they're all independently selected (i.e. the AA, highlights, e.c.t.)
278 colors seem way too much for this small piece. Can you check out what's up?
I used a few of these as reference, they have incredibly well-done bases. :)