Here is my work in progress..

has anyone been forced to resize pixel art to a slightly bigger scale and then use thousands of colors in it?

me no like.

mm.. yeah i think you may be beginning to understand, kinda hard for me to follow what you said though

Those lights in the first pic may not be bright enough to illuminate the whole car and perhaps that is why alot of the car is black..
but, it could also be that the surfaces inside the car which are seen as black are because they can't reflect any certain wavelength in the light back into your eye from the location of the surface, so they instead absorb it (or don't reflect/absorb anything because there is no light there to do that).

The second pic has artificial lights which look kinda yellowish/orange, and so they most likely are emitting light which has stronger wavelengths of this yellowish/orange, or the other wavelengths are dimmer than the yellowish/orange wavelengths, and so you get this tinted light.. now.. when this light hits say, the surfaces near it, the dimmer wavelengths won't be pronounced enough to be seen even if they get reflected into your eye if this yellowish orange is also reflected.. and so the surfaces get tinted.. but keep in mind that this required all wavelengths to be reflected.. (can see this in the concrete/stone surfaces which are grey-ish/white which reflects any color) (the buildings are also probably a desaturated white and so they also reflect all the wavelengths in the light..)

now.. say there is a surface which absorbs the yellow/orange and reflects the rest of the dimmer wavelengths, what you see then is the surface very dark, but it may be a very dim green or blue and such (for example the grass or plants)..

someone correct me if im wrong..

Looks nice so far.. keep up the good work..