Deo will testify to me flunking my lore knowledge, but green Faceless and brown Sea Giant?
Also, the issue you're having with colour variation, Just_Spectating, could probably be helped a long way by using different hues for different values. Right now, it looks like you did the whole thing in black and white (which is perfectly OK) and applied one solid hue to the entire part, using Colour as your blending mode. This makes very flat colours, and a generally monotone look. But as have been said, changing the beard's colour would also help a lot.
Yeah, you overdid contrast on that updated version, Dio.. and are you sure it's not the other way around, left is 512x512 and right is 256x256? Because the one on the right looks pixelated.