I can provide a answer for this bit~
Some sprites have been updated/will be updated while keeping in mind that they will receive a albino and melan.
You see having a pokemon that lacks color such as white or gray pokemon give for rather "boring" albino's and melans, especially white shinies that thus create gray melans seem to be not well liked by both staff and userbase alike.
So we are trying to give these pokemon a small hint of color, to give their respective albino's and melans a bit more color as well.
Oshawott receiving a small tint of blue means that both the albino and melan can get a bit more color as well instead of being pure white or pure gray.
The same happened with blitzle and zebstrika whom were pure gray before and now received a small hint of color so that the albino is more than just a light gray to white.
Ahh... I promise this is not an attack on any one artist or the art itself, but this is an unfathomable choice to me again ;__; Being so harshly bound by the self-imposed rules that you have to change canon colorations, even if only minorly, seems extremely misguided.
In fact, I would argue that the strictness of these guidelines has resulted in increasingly bland and predictable results (to me!), and is taking all of the artistry out of the spritework. If I can guess what color a sprite will be by a bit of color math between the differences of the normal and shiny sprites, what's even the point of doing them by hand at that rate? You're essentially recreating an algorithm that even a simple program could execute. (And I'm speaking from personal experience-- I have worked with Pokemon sprite manipulation in C++ as a hobby in years past!)
I can also observe that the "rules" have been one of the most common complaints in this thread, not only now, but going back substantially into the past. I completely understand the necessity of establishing art direction for consistency, but I can also say that it seems to have swung in the exact opposite direction, where it's instead stifling creativity.
To reiterate, it's never my intent to grill the artists or force change. But the color math rules have been buckled down on by the art staff as a unit, which is incredibly frustrating to many users. And I wish it were something that I could just let go, but collecting appealing sprites *is* the draw to PFQ lategame. I'm not angry, and I'm not going to assert that their work is "ugly", because the artists are literally just following the rules dictated to them. And that's why I think the rules themselves are the root problem and what ideally should change.
