Creamy - Tremulant here is a wonderfull pixel-artist and the portraits will be pixelled (in fact, it's necessary that they be so that they can easily be recolored with the code Fil has made so nice)
I did try them myself, hand-drawn and pixelled, and a mix of both, but i jsut cannot get the hang of this style of artwork. oh well, i will learn, but until that day we are glad to have superb artists like Trem willing to help

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Update!
FINALLY fixed the sets, mostly to take nearly all of the comments into consideration. here is an image containing the newly done versions:

not so exciting, since you had seen much of this already, but you can see this process of finding a nice style is nearing completion. I am, however, realising that some units, particulary the ones wearing ots of dark gray, may not have enough of a team color to be as easily identified as i would hope. I may look into the possibiliy of having the grays change a bit from team to team as well as the 2 uniform colors, sometimes being lighter or darker or more brown or more blue-gray etc.
Also, ignore the placement of the wood (in this case a bridge) tile, but if anyone has any comments on it atm id love to hear.
I dont think we have any functioning bridges in the game. sure we can make them visually, but we will never have 2 characters sharing a tile one below and one beneath the other so far as i know because the sorting gives us headaches just thinking about it, and ive never played a tactical game where the ability to have bridges had a notably positive impact on the gameplay, more often then not they were just a frustration to movement and visuals.

Also, a slight update to the tall grass, its still very much a WIP.
Darien, its interesting you should say to add contrast, i didnt hear you say that the first time. I actually thought taking contrast away would make it more readable, but maybe i was wrong? anyway i might as well post this now since ive gone and done it, but later i might try your suggestion
Another note on this - several people have suggested i bring the grass height lower, and there will be many types of grass that are not this high, but this really is a test of seeing how high i can make it while having the characters visible. once i get this look down, shorter grasses will come easily
Also, a general shout-out, i still am completely blank when it comes to ways to make the cloaks look different in a way that represents the job. if anyone has any idea, do let me know