Lesson 1: Sprites
No sprite comic can exist without the sprites. A Sprite is a pose or motion frame for a video game character from any 2-D game. Sprites are made up of pixels, with the number and degree of color variation depending on the "bit" count of the game it came from. 8-bit sprites, like from NES games, contain only enough pixels to make it obvious what you?re looking at and have a smaller palette of colors to choose from. For an example, take a look at 8-bit Theater by Brian Clevinger. It is a sprite comic based, nominally, on the plot and sprites of the classic Final Fantasy 1. Mario was also originally 8-bit. 16-bit sprites are from games from systems like the SNES and Sega Genesis. These sprites have many more pixels than the 8-bit-ers, which means they?d tower over an FF1 Black Mage if it wasn't increased from 1:1 pixel scale. Sonic the Hedgehog was created 16-bit and he grew in color complexity over the course of his games on the Genesis. The best Sonic Sprites come from either Sonic the Hedgehog 3 or the Sonic Advance series for the GBA.
You can build the sprites yourself, either by capturing freeze-frames of games to view every possible pose a character can hold in a game and meticulously build the sprite on your computer pixel by pixel, or rip the sprite out of the freeze-frame. You can also build the sprite up from scratch and make it in your own style. Personally, I barely have the patience to do that with 8-bit sprites, and 16-bit is out of the question. Instead, I go on the internet and look for sites that are offering Sprite Sheets that other, more dedicated and patient people have made, and copy those onto my computer. The thing with this is you often need to credit the person who made the sheet, unless you alter or re-color it to suit your whim and desire. But if you use even one original, un-altered sprite from that sheet, you're required to give credit where due.
Look for the largest, most complete sheet you can find and don't be afraid of re-copying a sprite if you find a better sheet for it. In fact, don?t be afraid of taking a better sheet even if it means the character will change slightly in appearance. I did that with Sonic. For all my Sonic-related sprites, I go to the Mystical Forest Zone at themfz.com. My other sprites were taken for the most part from The Spriters Resource.