I'm constantly dicking around with levels, colour balance, vibrance, curves, etc.  It's fun, and, certainly quick and useful.  But I think, actually, what people are asking when they question how Helm arrives at his colour choices isn't the subtle tones over-arching the palette, but his generally surprising choice of hues in a small area. The branch is made up of orange, mustards and green with vibrant purple shadows, for example. 

I often find I use more interesting colour combinations this way when I'm using a limited palette. But best when it's a sort of generic one, for various scenes/objects.  If the palette was tailored specifically for that one scene/item, I guess I'm afforded the option of being more conservative. 

You're not getting any replies because actually it's very difficult to work out what to do about that specific problem, and tbh, it looks very good as is.

I think after watching it for about 9,000 loops, it might look like it's traveling vertically partly because the motion isn't an arc - it starts as a forward jab, so it's sort of 'off-centre' to her left, and that is also the axis where height is implied in this perspective.

  For some reason I expected him to be pretty confident.  Kind of endearing, though I think even I could fake it for the camera a little bit and I'm quite shy.

Really like that Simpsons intro.   

This is really looking something special, keep it up!

So you're pixeling the whole set, without breaking down to re-usable tiles?