Yeah it looks nice, but really isn't hard to do considering it's a sprite. I have been animation for about 1-2 monthes and basically all my signature are animated such as the one I have now.
You didn't make Gradient, you just took the forge pallet and made a map out of it. It needs more pics, each move isn't very smooth and it kinda just looks like he is doing a retarded dance.
But each piece was not already positioned and angled and all I had to do was put them on top of each other and claim it as my own. http://img178.imageshack.us/img178/9213/princespriteswb3.gif Thats a sprite sheet like what he would have used. Understand now?