I dunno about that. I find lighting to be basically impossible for me unless it's basically like one part of the object being lighter and one being darker.
Viewing post in Need Ideas To Improve My Pixel Art
Take a photo, use a mosaic / tile filter, then recreate image as pixel art and animate from there. I also like gradually reducing image sizes in sequence to break them down to more or less pixelized versions which can help make it less overwhelming.
Maybe fireworks would be a better example than flowers, shading the clouds above & below. :)
I'm old school, started with MS Paint back in 94, everything was pretty much pixel art. animated gifs were all the rage. Good luck with your projects! Hit me up anytime!