Commentary BEFORE the tutorial:
Right, this is my first tutorial. Don't go about criticizing me; I'm simply saying what helped me with not being called unoriginal. Then again, nothing's original nowadays.
Ohwell. And also, if you see a WARNING: above a image, may want to avoid it; it's probably got neon colorings in lethal doseage.
And I use Adobe PhotoShop Elements 4.0, so I suggest you grab that. Or start whining that it's too much money. (No. Just…no.)I may make a Vista Paint version later, but I know that'll take a whole lot more time. So have fun with that. Onwards!
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1.) First, get a Sonic character sheet. I use www.spriters-resource.com to get my sheets. Now, onto 2.) (I'm Using Sonic from Sonic Battle, shown in the image below)



2.)Now, zoom in. We want to be focused on ONE SPRITE. Not two, not the whole sheet, just ONE. If you don't get this, here's a IMAGE. I picked a running sprite (Should be right below the Right Swing for the kick of Sonic's)


3.) So now, we take it and crop the image to it, to avoid hassle/loss of sprite location. It's easy; you can cut/paste or tell it to crop after boxing it in. Like such.


4.) Now pick if you want to reshade or recolor and then edit. I suppose I'll go with recolor today. I picked pink; don't ask why. I set out the normal Sonic coloring and the new colorset by his head. It looks HORRID like this.
WARNING:
(IMG at page bottom)

5.) Now we add clothes to draw away from the eye numbing pink. First, make outlines; I suggest doing this on a separate layer, but, since I'm making this in GIF, it's pretty much impossible to make a layer.I'll make a jacket (unbuttoned) and a pair of blue pants, for starters. I'd usually go about with the layers to check it looks good, but with the GIF format, I can't do anything. So this'll do for now. I also suggest slicing off the tail if you're wearing a shirt.


6.) Next, color it in and shade it. I've got two images: One of colored, one of shaded. I made a few minor edits to his clothes; the shirt is tucked under his glove on one part BUT NOT the other, though, so don't mention it. I did it on purpose. (I think.) (Comments are under the imgs)

Okay, this one isn't too good. It doesn't have depth, or ANYTHING really. It's a pink guy wearing a unshaded….something and unshaded pants. Would probably get you a FAIL if you showed this off; pink sonic with unshaded things = bad. (Inverting's worse; it earns a EPIC fail.)

Ohgods YES. It shows actual shading; and the light source is obvious. The shading tutorial might come later, but, for now, this will do. It gives a bit more of a idea of what (s)he wears. Also, if you want female ones, I do NOT suggest shirtless; this can be taken as explicit content on whereever this is going and be REMOVED. Use the Amy as a base if a female hedgehog is wanted; someone made a base for any new clothes; it's best for editors, too. Anyway, I'm done.

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Final Comments:
This tutorial was done in a hour. The sprites were taken out and edited; I suggest devoting a weekend if you want decent, useable sprites; one standing pose is just not done, guys. Make a moving pose, a attack pose, excetera. Just don't make it ONLY a standing pose; and don't poke fun at it, either. That's been done; it's not funny.
Except making a single cow sprite and having other people go cow tipping.
I don't think that's been done.