Hi! I'm new here, And I've taken an interest in making sprites, so far I've only been able to make recolours and minor edits though. What's been stopping me is... lines!

I use Photoshop CS3, and when I want to add lines, like an outline, or general lines over a colour, I just can't do it! If I use the pencil on 0% hardness, the line is too hard and crude, it stands out and looks messy. If I use the paintbrush on 100% hardness, the line is too... blurred I suppose, it doesn't look right and I cant figure out how to solve it. Anyone got any tips?

I also need some advice for animations. As you can see, mine don't run smoothly. :S

Please don't use my sprites, even though they're just recolours! Not that you'd want to.

You have to use the pencil tool and draw things in pixel by pixel really. To stop it from looking jagged, use Anti Alias, which you can probably google to find out about (Read: I'm too lazy to explain it atm). Then it's just studying the original sprites and practicing