Second iteration

I gave the Bionic Commando redesigns another shot. These new ones are more true to the source sprites (ref). The placement of colors and masses is important for achieving likeness, but I took the liberty of varying the colors a bit to liven things up. I kept the extra colors close to the main colors, e.g., purple and brown, skin tone and white, and sky blue and light gray.

There's a little specular light pixel on the boots of the sprite characters, but I made it into a gray detail instead. If my redesigns had gloss boots and were rendered in a game engine then the specular might move around or disappear, thus reducing likeness. I'm trying to think of the sprites in a nonfigurative way and more like a collection of color blobs. It's less important what the pixels portray. The type of likeness I'm after is more on a 'corner of the eye' or 'flashing by' level. In video games that kind of rapid identification is very common.

Edit: Threw a render layer on the 'copter trooper. The details are still mostly nonsense, as are the lines on the suit.