Yeah I think I understand it now! I watched the shader video and it makes some sense but I'm still intimidated by the shader coding language. That'll just come with practice though!
The only thing I'm a little unclear on is how you animate the sprites with the modulate method, cause it seems like it would be a chore to have to update the animation for the highlights, midtones, shading, etc..
By the way, I really appreciate you taking the time to do this, I can imagine it's a bit like IT answering our barrage of questions