Hi guys. I am new here, just got thru introducing myself in the meet and greet thread, hope you dont mind me asking some newbish questions.

I wondered if any one would be interested to help me break down the game art shown in the following screen grabs. The artwork is from a game called ifighter and ifighter 2 which are available on iphone, ipad and android.

I want to teach myself how to make artwork like this so I can get jobs working on games like this and also so I can work towards making my own game with similar artwork.

Things I want to figure out are:
-how would the background artwork be made?
-how would the character / obstacle artwork be made?
-which computer programs would be used to make the artwork?

I have limited experience. But to me, it looks like pixel art. However, from what I have read, most mobile games creators build their artwork as vectors, so that it can be easily scaled to suit different platforms, then render the artwork out as sprites at the appropriate size. Is it likely that something like that has been done for ifighter? ..considering that it is available on different platforms?

With the background art: I guess elements are repeated: some trees and buildings get reused. Would that be made in photoshop? Or is there other specialized programs used for making that kind of artwork to be tiled etc?

As I said, I am pretty newbish with this kind of artwork so sorry if my questions are obvious.