[QUOTE]I do not know how to work on sprite development properly.
Thank you in advance for any advice or help you can offer. [/QUOTE]

I'm not certain what you mean by "development", so I'll just guess.

The way that I acquire sprites for my games involves the following steps:
- rip / download
- figure out how big the frames need to be
- arrange them in a single picture
- RPG Maker - sprite display settings



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RIP / DOWNLOAD

When you want to use a game character in your game,
you need to get the pictures you need somehow.
First figure out what the character will do, 
then figure out which animations you want.
There are generally 2 methods for acquiring pictures:
1) Download a sprite sheet online that someone else made.
2) Run an emulator and take snapshots.

Downloading sprite sheets is the easiest way.
There are some good websites you can get them from, such as this one:
http://www.spriters-resource.com/

If you cannot find the sprite you're looking for, 
you'll have to acquire it youself from an emulator,
by taking snapshots.
For SNES games, Zsnes makes this easy because 
you can just press F1 and it lets you takes screenshots 
and advance the game 1 frame at a time.
Also, turn off all graphics layers you don't want to see.
(number keys on the keyboard. You usually only need layer 5 on)
Ideally, you see only the character surrounded by a single color.



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SIZE

Clean up any unwanted graphics from the snapshots you have,
so you have only the sprites you want against a solid color.

The charset or sprite sheet you'll be making will contain 
all the animation frames and directions of a single animation.
(much like RPG Maker charsets)

All directions must use the same number of animation frames.
If you have extra frames, skip some. But make sure it still animates nicely.

So open a lage new document in an adequate image editor like Photoshop,
and lay all the frames of the animation on top of each other.
Align them so that they animate correctly when you switch from one frame to another.
(Do one direction at a time)
Then display all the frames of the animation at once 
so you can see how big the frames need to be.
(each frame of animation needs to be the same size)
Crop the image.
After doing this with all the directions the animation will have,
(up, right, down, left)  (left and right usually have identical sizes)
you'll finally know how big all the animation frames need to be.
(it only needs to be big enough to fit everything, no bigger)
Make a selection that contains the graphics and crop to this size.



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ARRANGE THE PICTURES

Now create a new image.
The height varies depending on how many directions you have.
It needs to be tall enough to fit a frame of each direction, stacked one on top of the other vertically.
(frame height  X  number of directions)
The width varies depending on how many frames of animation you'll have,
stacked side by side horizontally.
(frame width  X  number of animation frames)

Now paste the sprites into this file so that the directions go clockwise as you go down,
starting with UP.
And paste animation frames so that the animation starts on the left and advances as you go right.
Make sure every sprite you paste is exactly the same size.
(don't stretch the images, just keep your selection sizes the same)

Finally, flatten the layers in the final image.
For photoshop, double-click the layer afterwards so that it's not a "background" layer.
Then use the wand selection tool
(set to NOT use anti-aliasing)
to select the background color, and delete it, making the area around all your sprites transparent.
Finally, save this image as a PNG file.
(preferably 8-bit, but 24-bit will also work if you have lots of colors, or are using translucent images)



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Now this animation is ready to use in the RPG Maker.
Copy it to the "charset" folder of the RPG Maker.

When you want to display it, you'll need to adjust some settings to tell it 
how many directions and animation frame it has.
The method above will create a charset with only 1 column and 1 row of animations.
(You can actually have more, just like in RPG Maker 2000, but I don't recommend it)

You can look up more information about these sprite settings in the RPG Maker's help system.
(Press F1 while it's open, or open the html files in its "help" folder)
