Well, buddy, you can for starters find a good sonic spritesheet (I'd suggest the MFZ, at themysticalforestzone.com , and once you went there, go to the Sprites section) Then you can either do a standard sonic-and-friends only comic, or whatever you like, if you have a spritesheet. If you want to make a sheet for yourself, i'd suggest a small sheet that you recolor, and there should be plenty of tutorials about recoloring on youtube. Then you add on things that make your character unique (Like my character's hair and pants) instead of being ONLY a recolor.

That's all i can say. If you want a tutorial for adding things onto the sprites, they have that on Ytube as well.

I have always been pretty horrific at spriting but all I can say is the gridlines function on paint is a lifesaver, as it lets you see what you're doing. As is transparent selection. I'm afraid I can't guide you where anything is cause I've got Windows 7 and the paint on that is totally different but hopefully that'll be a bit of help.

I've never used gimp, but if it's anything like photoshop then there should be a grid function hiding in there too. Would it be possible to scan (or import a photo) in then use that as a base? Using an existing sprite (eg sonic) as a referance. Use a large flat square brush for the pixels (the larger, the smaller the sprite in the end will be), then shrink it down til the squares are a pixel large? I've never tried it so it might be a total failiure but it's an idea eh?

I used to sprite a bit. Most of mine were edits of Sonic Sprites into other characters, and a few OCs. One was a turtle. Basically, I just worked way harder than I needed to and learned all of the little tricks Paint had to offer. Transparent selection is great, btw. There's just so much you can do with it. *sighs with nostalgia remembering when I discovered you could use it to replace every instance of a color in a selection with another instantly*