Upon reading your little post, I did see that you were right about the whole shape thing, and you were partially right about the piece thing. I started first on the little feet and worked my way up towards the boxy cockpit. I revised it several times until I came to this one. I tried to go more by plain shapes, but now I think it looks somewhat less closer to the game style than before (Must be how I've darkened the sides to give it a rounder feel.
Sorry if I seem to not be able to apply the criticism right, but the basic idea was still that the mech would still have to be of a walker type, not exactly a tank. The walker one was my original idea before I found out how deceptively tricky it is to make it on battlemechs. I went with the floater one then revised many things before going with this one.

Also, you could've posted somewhat better, pixel-perfect quality examples. JPEG never does good to any 2d game, ever, but it served as an example well enough.



EDIT: Modified it further by adding shadows as I recalled from that baby chubby dragon thread. Looks a bit anti-sluggishly inspired though..

Thanks a lot, Arach'. Although I'm slightly disappointed I'll have to revise it a lot, I'll take the matter into my hands soon enough. Which reminds me, I'll have to fix the turret hole and reposition it soon.

A problem with your link, Mim, it should lead to this:
Dead Tree Example

But otherwise, do not attempt a frontal light source, however, if you did, the tree wouldn't really have many (if any at all) shadows on the front, and don't mirror the branches. And another small tip, most trees are usually not as thick as yours is, they're somewhat more in the middle, you should decrease it's radius quite a bit.

Attempt the 50 Brightness challange in Pro Motion. Very tricky, but cool. Also, I took a look at Xian, it seems that his work isn't only 50, seems to be higher and (possibly) lower..