With the breathing animation: the subpixeling movement you have there is way too extreme. If you look at Metal Gear Solid sprites, they move only a few pixels at the edge of each region of colors, and definitely not several pixels in distance over the course of an animation unless they were trying to convey a lot of movement. That's not what you want in breathing; it's a subtle movement. The animation there looks more like the light source has shifted dramatically from his side to more above him.
But more importantly, that animation doesn't look like breathing, it's more like just standing taller for some reason. If you're going to the trouble of animating a character, ideally you'd want to use it to convey personality.
