the 2023 sprite in the first image looks great, very DP-style. i will say that gen 5 definitely had a slight change to the style though, it's most noticeable in how it uses proportions and the way colours are used in the outlines, it would be helpful to study these differences as closely as i have

True. And yeah, in the case of the sprites in the 2 screenshots, I used parts from HGSS and DPPt to make them. I was talking about gen 4/5 sprites in general being my start at spriting. I did try to dig more into gen 5’s overall style, but ran into so many problems down the road.