Here's an update to my sprite. Along with a shiny coloring.
.....
Based on Griffin's suggestion, I smoothed out the transition on the sword tentacle. I also reduced the use of black in some of the outlines.
I agree that my pose is not as action-packed as some of the others, but I was really trying to go for a clean rendition of all the elements of Aragornbird's design. In particular, I tried to stay faithful to the overall proportions of the design. I think Abird's design has a wonderful combination of both "long" and "bulky", so I really wanted to transfer those two themes into the sprite. I tried a few other action-oriented poses, but I couldn't pull them off in an 80X80 square without compromising the proportions of the design. So, I opted for a "ready stance" and tried to focus on details and shading.
As for the shiny, I decided to go with black for the hat, since most classic pirate hats are black. I'm using red for the gloves and face, because red "feels" like Fighting-type to me. I used gold for the "cutlery", because gold is a cool color for metal, and gold accents add a lot of "pop" to the shiny. I tried out many shiny skin colors, but I'm currently going with purple. I prefer the purple shiny for a couple of reasons.
1) I'm a total fanboy for all the purple water shinies in the real game (Lanturn, Blastoise, Vappy, and Walrein are my faves). So, the opportunity to make a purple water shiny on the CAP project is almost too good to pass up.
2) Purple goes well with red, since purple has red in it.
3) Purple seems to "fit" with a slithery, tentacled creature like CAP6.
But, purple water shinies typically have a normal color of blue, not green like our pirate squid. So, a purple shiny might not be right for this guy. I made other shinies in
blue,
aquamarine, and
seaweed green -- to experiment with colors that bring out the Water typing. I'm interested to hear other opinions on shiny colorings.