Blocker - Git suggests this file is unchanged from the previous version, is this correct? Regarding leaving it as is - for high-res sprites, I'd want to put this to a public vote, and my vote would be "no" but if the general vote is "yes" I could leave it as is. Remaining as-is is an absolute no-go for the low-res sprites, as it doesn't show direction, unless you've got an alternate idea here (and I don't feel that the side of the foot tap is visible enough, personally).
Disarmer - "if the Lemming in question has a permanent skill assigned then this sprite would be entirely green!" - Disarmer itself is a permanent skill, so the lemming will
always have one assigned. The vest and hat (once recoloring bug is fixed - again, this is an NL bug, not a fault with your images) end up
red in-game. My main issue with the yellow hat / neon vest is that they don't really have much of an Xmas-y feel to them IMO, perhaps there are other colors that fit better that
do have such a feel? (Side note: Your sprite has slightly wrong shades of red, I think. But this is a very easy fix that I can handle if we decide to use this sprite.)
Miner - Looks good now!
Shrugger - Same here!
Shimmier - And here!
The drill-digger, this is another one that I'm not personally too keen on, but I could accept if the community as a whole prefers it. Do keep in mind that we need a suitable digger animation for low-res, too, and this shouldn't be
too different (eg: if high-res is a drill digger, low-res shouldn't be digging with his hands; but it'd be perfectly fine - in fact, I'd expect this - that low-res wouldn't have the hard-hat / clothing, for example).
Regarding the low-res sprite changes - I quite like them personally, but I feel this too is something the community should have input on. I'll include your new sprites in the RC build, but if people generally don't like them, they'll be reverted to the existing ones for the stable release. If the overall opinion is neutral or positive, I'll keep your ones.