Wow awesome!! I'd love to see this used in an animation. xD As for the white pixels, maybe there are some slightly transparent pixels in there that you missed? GIF images don't support partially transparent pixels, so only fully transparent or fully opaque pixels.
Happy you liked it! Regarding the white pixels, they weren't even there as i edited and re-edited the sprite, so I sorta gave up
The animation needs more in between frames if you want to make it smoother. As for the blade, the outline for it is jagged and need more of a curve to it. Tho it seems you just rotated the blade without going through a cleanup process.For the overall shading and coloring, the blade is flat shaded, colors are just more over bland.