Maybe it's just me (I'm certainly no expert on dithering, let alone pixel art in general) but the "chaos", at least algorithmically, looks pretty orderly to me. It looks a checkerboard dither rather than a noise dither. It does look somewhat chaotic but I think that's higher level chaos, like the artist was adding some grime in the color between (i.e. implied by the dithering of) the solid colors, and the outline of that grime is chaotic but the inner texture is checkerboard.

If that makes sense.

Joe has pretty an awesome dithering style:

I like where this thread is going!

Dithering is a pretty complex topic. My general advice would be:
-try and avoid it altogether, if at all possible.
-use only one pattern (50-50 chequer), as you can easily waste time and make the image worse unless you knwo what you're doing.

Ways to approach it are endless, but there is no quick and easy workaround (except dithered color-reduction).

Here are some styles:

BLOTCHES

LINES

ORDER

CHAOS

For some reason, it will not embed the last two images. See them here:
order: http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_zYKkyHHRNYI/R … Vjelik.png
chaos: http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_zYKkyHHRNYI/S … goBLOG.gif

Grafx2 FUCK YEAH

I suck with pixel art stuff but I know Grafx2 has a crosshatch fx thing that lets you fill and draw with crosshatch.

I'm actually kind of new to pixel art but what i've found I like for dithering is either just a pure checker board, or do the check board and then delete one pixel (or color it the background color i guess) every so often so you end up with a bunch of negative space plusses

EDIT: like this

I honestly am not sure if this is what you mean though...

was wondering if anyone would like to trade some crosshatching techniques.  i usually use about 3 or 4 patterns and stick to that.  i know there are other ways to do it.  i imagine a thread that is sort of like the pixel art equivalent of sloninsky's scale thesaurus for musical scales.  the book basically shows you every way you can divide the ocatave within the western scale starting with 2 note groupings and ending with the chromatic scales.  i'm sure there is a way to do this with crosshatching.  how to organize?