I am writing in the hopes that the more advanced pixel artists on this board will lend a hand.

I have been playing around with pixels now for a couple months. I thoroughly love the medium, computer pixels, besides the fact that it is great for game designs. However, I don't seem to be getting any better. I pixel as much as I can, and if I use a source to mimic, my pixelwork looks good. (IMO - chuckle)

But when I try to go freehand, I am less than enthusiastic with the outcome. I have problems with shading and colors mostly. I can get the lineart fairly well, I think my years and years of drawing as a youngster helped in that way. However, my use of colors and shading, AA and dithering, are all major suckage.

You can flip through my stuff in the gallery if you have time and/or want to.

What I am wanting... is anyone out there willing to point me to resources that would be good to learn IN A CERTAIN ORDER. I just recently got a gift-cert to AMAZON for $40 and I am looking around for a good art guidebook or I will just stick to the tried and true programming book (I love web programming, mainly PHP but I am getting into Flash MX). But I am willing to listen to someone who would recommend a certain book that would help me in this endeavor.

I am hoping someone can tell me to:
Go to this website, follow these tutorials...
THEN once you are comfortable doing that...
Check out this site, these tutorials...
THEN go here and... blah blah blah

Some kind of order so this stuff makes sense better...
I have gone around and downloaded and printed out and had bound into bookform so many tutorials. And I sit and look through them and end up just ogling the pixelwork. I have the hardest time learning from this stuff printed out. Which is weird because that is how I learned to program? I print out the PDF manuals for the various software packages and print them out and read them at home.

I have picked up PHP, Flash Actionscript 2.0, Javascript, HTML, CSS, and a few others this way... So to NOT BE ABLE to learn pixelling like this is frustrating me. I am in the middle of a game project that is currently on hold till sometime next month and I was hoping to do the artwork for it myself. Now I know this may sound egotistical, but it isn't... Anally-retentive is more like it. Besides, I think I am a decent enough artist to make this work... but this medium seems to be beyond me.

I know it is not tho... So some help would be appreciated.

Thanks a bunch...

I would like to learn isometric and sprite designs... freeform would be fun, but not as important to me.

I would love to pick up some tips for isometric... anything I can learn I will...

That's just it... I have surfed all over... Most of the tutorials with the best looking pixelart are in a language I do not know... (technically, the only one I DO know is english) Since I am still new to all this, I was hoping the more advanced pixellers had their own little reference sites / tutorial sites that only they knew of. Something they would be willing to share.

That is fair... It's not so much a 1-2-3 that I was hoping for as a direction to learning... Like you should learn lineart first... Then colors... then shading... and here are the best websites / tutorials / books for each...

So... all that to say... whatever you think would help someone new to this, please tell me...

p.s. I have been through all the tutorial links at this site (which btw are the best collections of links that actually work, and quality of information at the actual sites that I have found yet) and I still feel like I am missing something...