#2 cursor shadow intensity looks horrible

[Tyler W.R. Cole]

the block shadows look great, but shadows when using the brush or selection tools overlap and multiply and have variable independent alpha values, which looks bad when the number of blocks is greater than 1.

I suggest you make the shadows' alpha values 1.0 and change only the color per frame, but render the shadows under the grid lines, and on top of the blocks. That way you still see the cursor shadows, but they're nicer like the block shadows.