I'd drawn a solid hexagonal pickup we probably shall use for momentary invincibility. Our ship can look invincible in a cheap way: it can flash like baddies do when shot, and probably that will be the solution.

The hexagon experience has been a little but tough one, this is what I learned.
I drew a wonderful hexagon with light and shadow effect along the corners. An hexagon is perfect to do on a 320x200 resolution machine. The width/height ratio is 1.6 and we can assume one single pixel has to be similar too in this proportion. Avoiding annoying explications, this means that if you put your pixels in a neat diagonal, you'll get a 30° angle instead of 45°.
If an hexagon is your target, you can place the bisections in vertical. Hence, the hexagon's 60° angle between two bisections now only needs our beautiful "fake" diagonal with a 30° angle with the plane.

Ok the result was nice. Then, I tried to rotate it in 4 frames, changing all the shadows at any frame. Hell, but it would mean I had to rotate by 15° a crappy bunch made in 8x16x4 resolution!
I tried and tried, and must say I obtained a certain outcome, but all the other frames were a bit worse than the "magic" one, and the final result was between mediocre and almost sufficient.
That's because I did that simple "lighthouse" animation (which is not bad in all, Mike suggested me to make it smoother but that means 12 frames...12 frames oh my gosh!).

So this is the first thing I learned. the second is: draw simple animations for elaborate sprites, draw elaborated animations for simple sprites.
Good, on with the Plain Shot pickup now.