I'm relatively new to pixel art; I've been pixelling for a couple of years, but until recently, only in my offtime, so my work is a bit unrefined often. I'm working on a small piece for a challenge over on pixel joint, about a birch tree.

My little idea is a robot smoking a pipe under a hologram of a birch tree.



I have a few questions about its execution:

1) What is the best way to more authentically represent the "digitalness" of the leaves and trees? Right now, I'm just using opacity to make the leaves seem more digital, but it doesn't feel legitimate and it doesn't work well when I do it on the trees, which overlap.

2) What is the best way to produce metallic shading on the bot? Right now, I'm using a pretty generic light source (top right) which doesn't reflect the light from the hologram, and obviously there's not enough bright-on-dark to give a shiny/metallic feel. I haven't implemented that, tho, because I'm not sure how to represent the hologram lighting without compromising a lot of the shape on the rest of the body.

3) I'm not confident in my pallet; it doesn't have a lot of coherence, but I'm not sure how to unify some of the colors (especially the browns and greens, which stand apart from the metal, which I could probably apply to the background and trees)

Thanks for any help!