The more things change, the more they stay the same...
At last, the fruit of the rumored art change is here. I'm still getting the hang of it, but I'm already finding it takes MUCH less time to take a page from pencils to finished. It's less work, and more of the work that I'm doing is actually the process of creation as opposed to juggling palette swatches and stuff.
The secret sauce here: The art is actually 100% grayscale, but with a gradient map that transforms the grays into colors of my choosing on top. It's hot swappable, so the colors can be changed on the fly. It's not true color, but it's something like "gameboy color" color: more evocative than representational. I love it! Also, the gradient maps stop just short of true black and true white, allowing me to reserve them for speech bubbles and a few select scene elements (like highlights on characters' eyes, fenic's tears etc).
Thanks for reading!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!