Awesome 

The falling snow is lovely. But the place is also beautiful !

method used to address transparency is brilliant. mesmerizing piece

Probably the best snowing effect on PJ.

The big snowflakes detract only because they make it so obvious of the looping animation  

Oh man that snow...! It;s beautifully realistic, as if straight from a movie.

Wow you make such smooth animations! 

I keep coming back to look at this. This is so beatiful! Very well done, and with only 8 colors, yet!

I could spot your style and animations from a mile away.

Incredible.

That's some killer snow animation.

This is awesome.

This is incredible. Very nice job.

The faster moving snowflakes reminded me more of spirits than snowflakes, as someone else had mentioned. Could actually be an interesting idea in it's own right...

the colors are so christmas-y and the snow floating in the foreground makes this seem so much more realistic. hats off to you! great job!

Either way is really good. I think it just depends whether you want the faster more realistic/smooth look or a slower kinda mystical look. (I will say the slower version also has an added effect where I can more closely follow the snowflakes individually). But yeah it's up to you. I think either way would look fantastic, I have a hard time choosing between them!

I think the "transparent" versions of those chunks makes more sense. From what I can tell, the closer a snowflake is to the camera, the blurrier/more see-through it gets. When I saw the versions here, I thought of either energy balls a la Dragonball Z or like little ghost spirits zipping by. Also, the bottom one may need to be faster since it's closer to the camera.

Once again, beautiful work! Your animations are always a treat to see.

@Strawzzboy64 that's an orb, dude. I heard about them on pixel ghost hunters. It's basically an 8-bit ghost

I'm getting chilly just looking at this. Beautiful animation.

This is very beautiful, especially the near foreground snow effect - so nicely done.

I really like colors and composition. In my opinion snowflakes speed shouldn't be slower. Torii color and shape contrast so much with everything else and snowflakes being fast add up to this contrast.

Thanks for sharing this, will definitely study it later.

I don't think the snow is falling too fast. I live in a snowy country, and the speed that snow falls varies depending on how heavy the snowfall is. Larger snowflakes means that it falls faster, obviously.

here is a 33% slower anim https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/5708588/_pixels/Torii_anim_slow.gif

what do you think ?

Regarding the snow fall, i should have had a 3rdplan layer with much slower snow, it would have calmed down the overall mood i guess.
Regarding the "large chnuks", those are fist plan big snow flakes... I've edited it to blur/dither them, does it makes more sens now ?
Thanks for this detailed feedback, much appreciated  !

thanks A2J2TIWARI !
I feel stupide but I don't know PP's work... do you have any link ?
 

Thanks a lot Pix.Ed for taking the time to drop such a nice comment.
 

Very beautiful. I think I would personally like it more if the snow fell slower, as I think it would have a softer, more serene effect that I feel would be fitting for the "mystical" torii. But at the same time, it's just so smooth as it is, and what's more is it looks incredibly realistic. Actually I kind of looks like you tried to balance it between fast/slow, because it does appear sliiightly slower than the reference? Either way, it's very nice to look at.

Question, what are the faster moving larger chunks?

you and PPD are probably the best at handling particles. Lovely mood in this piece. Me likey

Masterful. Colors are increadible, hard to believe it's only 8 colors. Also love the depth of the animation with the diferent size snow flakes flowing in different patterns. My favorite are the mid range flakes shaped like a +, they look so hefty at 1x. Lots of pixeling lessons to learn from this piece. Thanks for sharing. 

Great piece.

You have my vote :)

Animating at 24FPS makes everything looks smooth =)

You may be right, but I was aiming at keping the image dynamic and tens.
The video ref I used was also kinda fast  : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RuqVnqNPyC0

thanks for the feedback !
 

Looks so smooth but imo a bit too fast for snow. (:

Good lord, that animation looks incredible.