Composition wise this

is much better than this

why?
well, try to cover the right half of the first image with you palm, it feels kinda like something is missing, the image has lost a vital component - the angel. Now if you cover the left half of the second picture it gives a sense of a complete piece by itself. In other words, the second piece lacks cohesion and the viewer cannot find any noticeable interaction between the cities, thus it is hard to convey a conflict.
A workaround could be a viewer character:

and more missiles from both sides. this makes a triangle pattern for the viewer to follow.

another way to make the piece more dynamic would be to arrange them into a diagonal:


or a mixture of both:


you could also change the perspective of the viewer to change the whole meaning of the piece.
(sorry for the bad English)

I didnt know that you can zoom, thank you.i started with the engines and everything evolved from that, this is very much a learning by doing for me.Up to this point i have redone and gone over everything several times so that made the difference in technique and look i now starting to like the outcome and trying to clean it up and level it out before making the rest, i toned down the texture on the bricks and door, i still cant decide if i should use black outlines on everything, or use shaded outlines like the one on the electric box ontop of the house, or not use outlines at all.

btw i dont understand "with pretty-but-artificial gradients on the metallic areas", i think its hard to paint on flat areas without trying to imitate "textures" at all, any tips on making it come alive without getting the result with the "photorealistic textures" ?.

See pixel art is all about restricting yourself.

Yes, it is harder to make some textures without using a gradient, but it might also be more feasible result.
Like your image uses over 255 colours to achieve what it is, but maybe you dont need that much?
Heres your image reduced to 25 colours, do you see any difference?



They are really similiar.

Anyway i suggest you read a few tutorials:
http://www.pixeljoint.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=11299
http://opengameart.org/content/les-forges-pixel-art-course

Thanks for explaining, Applzor 

When dealing with a completely spherical object, the shades look like circles, one inside another.



There's the first frame of the sideview animation (without the iris). Then, an interpretation of how the shade on the eyeball is, without the "veiny thing" Then I put a messy approximation of how a sphere would be shaded like, and finally, some quick messy dithering to reduce the abruptness of the shades.

I dont really think the eyeball would benefit from dither, i mean it really breaks the nes style, and there is no need for it what so ever now.

Also, you current sprite takes too much space! it uses 44 8*8 sprites and is 8 sprites wide, if you know the nes restrictions, then you probably know that the screen can only draw 8 sprites per scanline, so you have a problem if in your game it lines up with the character. Plus, 8 of the sprites are only using 6*1 pixels of space in the tile, so i reduced it to 6*6 sprites:



Well, thats only if you REALLY wanna stick to the nes restrictions.

Would it be possible to get an extension until tomorrow morning ? 

140 100 minutes left, do eet now, your account depends on it.

So am I