this is so fruppin cute

 Pretty much everything I could get my hands on, from Autodesk Animator to Photoshop.

Mrmo Tarius Thanks for response! What have you pixelled in before, that it provided such a difference?

nice one.  Although, the rainbow on the side panel looks good, but the rainbow paint falling on the marshmallow guy isnt really reading as a rainbow to me, not sure why.   It looks more like chocolate/vanilla soft serve ice cream, like the blues seem to serve as shadows for the vanilla part.  Not that it looks bad for that though.

The happy grin did wonders!

 I feel this may look like blatant advertising, but I've found that Grafx2 really boosted my productivity by simply being a perfectly pixelart-oriented environment :)

Also, you may have noticed I'm pretty much only doing the weekly challenges as of late- they provide me with the necessary motivation to create stuff by making all sorts of crazy restrictions, like the 4-color rainbow one :)
I've also been endlessly browsing Pixeljoint and marveled at the works of some great artists featured here, so I'd say that provided the inspiration :)

I've only recently 'discovered' the refreshing weekly challenge + grafx2 combination, and I'd say that would be the reason for my recent bump in productivity.

@PixelPocket: thanks! I'm considering changing the expression of that paint-splattered guy to a happy grin now, actually :P

Oh god, its so cute. The little marshmellow people deserve to be drenched in rainbow fluids. Anyways, I really like your pallette. It is so muted, yet it feels vibrant because of subject matter. Good job!

Unrelated to picture (I like your style(s) very much, so I like this one too, although I'm wondering if marshmallow people like it all, if their sad faces become even sadder), I want to ask how you gained such productivity with pixelart? Seems that in the old age you drew rarer or slower.