So You Want to be a Pixel Artist

I'm working my way through this tutorial which was clearly written over a decade ago.  It seems like a less than ideal place to start learning to make pixel art.  While there is a lot of great information here you have to work very hard to find it as the writing is a bit all over the place, and the basics that you would expect to start with (like what software to use, how to make a sprite sheet, etc.) aren't covered at all.

The tutorial starts with terrain tiles and illustrates good art vs. bad with suggestions on how to avoid tiling and break up the repetition.  There is some interesting analysis on some of the greatest looking pixel art games and how they work their magic.  Then we get into sprite characters.

So I made this little guy.  He's a 16x16 animated sprite.  I followed the tutorial but got a little lazy when it came to his standing pose.  Unfortunately this blog allow me to load him as tiny or "small" like this:

 I have a lot of work to do. :)