I am going after more of todays Pixel Art which has more then a 4 color 5 shades of each type of thing.
Sorry, but I have to interject here.
You are apparently very new to pixel art if you think "today's" pixel art uses more than 4-5 shades per color/thing/etc. to indicate form, lighting, depth, materials, etc., since pixel-art is pixel-art, regardless of when it was created. Pixel art is simply the controlled placement of pixels to create art. The more colors you add that aren't necessary to indicate depth/lighting/etc., the less control you have over the placement of pixels once you start grabbing colors that are too similar to tell apart with a quick glance (after all, that's how viewers will look at your art -- they're definitely not admiring your subtle gradients at this low of a resolution -- they're looking for clarity in an image as quickly as possible.)
Aside from it simply sounding like an excuse for your "style" and whatnot, your interpretation of the number of colors in pixel art is just incorrect. With about 14 colors in your knight sprite, my eye only reads maybe 4 -- 1) the slits in the mask, 2) the gray color on the stomach/chest area, 3) the darker color across most of the sprite, and 4) a single red on the cape -- and if I have to zoom in or look more closely to see the other colors in the image, you've missed your chance at clarity, and thus the image looks flat and colorless to me with only 4 colors in the end -- the equivalent of a poorly done NES sprite -- which is, according to your reply to Alex's edit, NOT what you're going for. The same goes for the lighter version of the knight too.
I suggest you listen to Alex when he says you should use less colors. His edit points out the issues in your form/lighting -- it wasn't a sloppy edit at all, it was just a quick way to illustrate his points on the most glaring issues -- the points I just made again to reiterate how important what he said was to an image like this since you seemed to rationalize why Alex's edit wasn't done well enough to help you fix the issues you somehow thought your sprite didn't have. Just because he suggested to limit the colors didn't mean that he meant for you to go and restrict your entire palette to 4 colors (after all, that's the problem with the image now -- with 14 colors, it still *looks* like it only has 4 -- more colors rarely means better pixel art, and if you believe that, you might as well use photoshop brushes and vector graphics because that'll look a lot better since it generally is at a higher resolution where finer gradients can be more appreciated.)
I'm not saying you're ignoring his advice completely, but I am suggesting you give it a lot more consideration. Your work will be better because of it.