I'm in the process of updating the sprite with a set of more detailed hand-drawn animations, here's where i'm at.
where the original was painted down with a thick brush, the new sprites will be built using the thin single-line vector tool- the pencil. this opens a lot of doors in terms of colour and zooming, and pretty much halves the filesize of the sprite. it's also a lot of work- but for animations as short and as important as character sprites, i'm prepared to sink in the time.