Perhaps I wasn't descriptive enough with my post. I didn't mean that authenticity wasn't important. I meant that "authenticity" as in "you used non pixel art overlays in your game so you are a fraud."

Hmm. I'm not opposed to doing that in principle myself. I wouldn't call people frauds for doing it that's for sure. But at the same time I think pixel art mixed up with various kinds of automated render effects don't mesh so well. The reason being that high fidelity effects like blur, smudge, sharpen, gradient overlays etc feel at odds visually with the low fidelity quality of pixel art. Pixel art usually has very obvious limitations in terms of both resolution and color count, every pixel is deliberately placed, and the totality of it is completely crafted by hand. Render effects are diametrically opposite to all that; they're basically automated algorithms that go wild with color usage, no attention to individual pixel placement, and you have only indirect control over them by way of parameters to tweak.

Nothing wrong with mixing them in and of itself, but to some people, me included, the result will often look like a jarring hifi/lofi-clash.

I'm wondering about a thing... is there a sure way to apply the same palette across all frames when you change color depth? In my experience it sometimes works and sometimes doesn't.

Hello,

Here's a good read to check out if you haven't already. It covers all kinds of principles specific to (modern) pixel art, including dithering techniques:
http://pixeljoint.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=11299

Also, where do you stand on combining traditional digital with pixel digital? Is it extremely taboo? Such as using a traditional gradient in some areas and a dithering effect over/under it.

Not taboo per se. But it tends to be strongly discouraged around here for several reasons. Pixelation users do a lot of edits to help point out problems in posted pieces, and that's hard to do when an image has thousands of colors introduced by tools like gradient, smear, blur etc. So for that reason alone it's best to stick to non-"dirty" tools, otherwise people won't be able to help out. The link above mentions other reasons it's not a very good idea as well.

The skin is so good it gave Helm a seizure

Very good skin!

Putting it into some kind of context, like a flower pot on a veranda or something would help with readability of course. But yeah, it looks good. Reads like flowers no problem.