I finally got it to work. (Patreon)

TL:DR - I did a bunch of stuff to get the style I wanted which basically boiled down to ditching all layer effects in CSP and painting it by hand in a way that mimics cell animation. Sorry for the repeated test animations, but they're at least more interesting than bouncing balls and looping backgrounds. I'm pumped with the results and ready to move onto learning more background work and maybe attempting a multishot video like in the shantae storyboard I sketched up. Also, it's late and remember to stay hydrated, unlike me. Bed and water now. :3

Long:

I finally got the color and analog damage effects to work the way I wanted.

I basically had to stop relying on the filters and make a 50% saturation color palette with the specific color patterns I wanted, organized in the proper order that I wanted.. higher value colors move clockwise in hue while lower value colors move counter clockwise in hue. all with no midtone swatch being of higher value of 80 or lower value of 20, and again only using pure white and pure black for things like teeth, eyes, eye lashes, etcetera.

Once that was made, I was able to approximate Rouge's original colors to the specific swatches I had prepped and was able to paint her directly to canvas, trying to mimic painting on cells and since the swatches are already made. I looked at a bunch of references, but in the end, aimed for cell shading that was akin to the tenchi series but then leaned more into gunsmith cats, which has rougher brushstrokes in some of their cell shadings.

Animating in moho went the usual way but thanks to using the new color palette, it already looked "Retro" like despite it being rigged animation and that suits 'cause i'm aiming for something more akin to drunk oaks style or the society of virtue's animation style in terms of animating.

Lastly, since the original colors where correct, once importing into davinchi, it was much easier to add the analog damage in a way that was noticeable but not TOO noticeable, and it feels like I finally hit upon the style that I want to use for animations. now, i gotta learn more background work but i'm feeling way more prepaired to try to bring that shantae storyboard to life.

sorry for the repeated types of animations, but I figured these would be more entertaining than me uploading bouncing balls, scrolling scooby doo like backgrounds or other more mundane types of stuff. But i'm pumped to finally feel like I got the result I wanted.