Any good tips on how to begin on making your own sprites? I'm working on a project and I feel bad for using others work and would prefer to use what I make. If it would help it's gonna have Touhou characters so any tips on how to convert them easily over to custom sprites would be very helpful.
I'm not sure what you mean by 'convert them easily over to custom sprites'. If it's custom, I'm assuming you're either creating your own or modifying existing ones. Either way you would need an application, and two stand out:
Graphics GaleTechnically you there is a full version for $27, but I think the only useful feature the full version has that the free version doesn't is an export-as-gif feature. If you need gifs, you can always create them with other applications with the individually exported sprites, so this isn't a big deal. It looks and feels rather archaic, but it should fit the needs of any pixel artist/animator. I believe it's also the most used among spriters. It has a real-time animation preview window.
AsepriteI haven't used this one as much as Graphics Gale, but it certainly looks nicer. This alone makes me want to test it out more, but I haven't fiddled with it much. It's also completely free. It doesn't feature gif exports as well, but again this shouldn't be a problem. From the little that I've played with it, it seems a bit harder to actually create and edit animations (as in frame by frame stuff, as the animation editor isn't just a separate window. It also doesn't have a
real-time animation preview like GG does). I believe this is popular alternative to people who are put off by Graphics Gale's archaic-ness.
If you want tutorials and tips, then
this guide has tons of useful information. The other guides on that site are very helpful as well.
If this is your very first attempt at sprite making, then I suggest just opening up MS Paint and playing around with the pencil tool just to get a feel for pixel drawing.