[Aezeal]

I love your guide, might need to do things that way too, probably should actually.

my way of giving shades etc is that I just select the region I want shaded (usually select color and then a smallish value as treshold, I usually just try a few time and then decide which area I like best, goes very very quikcly) and then "brush" it with a lighter color on one side and a darker shade on the other side.. GIMP creates all sorts of inbetween shades that way. I think I mean that I use pressure sensitive coloring.

reading back I guess it's a bit what llama means, Burnsaber has a point, you can completely ruin a pic by doing to much.. but luckily Gimp give the option to undo step by step soo you can go back to where it's still good.

I also love doing bloodstains on weapons this way.

other stuff I've learned the hard way:
copy pasting from sprites = good
rotating 90/180/270/360/inverting etc = good
rotating it at any other angle = not good = ugly

And while Sombre has a point that resizing will nearly never get near the quality of his artwork it might still be better than you can create yourself if you are less artistic.. and your wanted sprites don't resemble anything existing. Just mind the edges is a thing I've learned .