Sonic FC Help

I'm wondering if anyone can help me with tips, or a technique. I'm looking to make a Sonic FC to use for animations, but I don't know where to start!

The image editing programs I have are Macromedia Fireworks and Paint.net, but I haven't been able to find a tutorial for either of them!

When I say Sonic FC, I don't just want to make a recolor, but that's kind of hard since I don't know the first thing about spriting.

If you know anything about how to make one, or know any tutorials, please tell me!
Thanks!

You can probably Google something like "Sonic Sprite FC tutorial" or something but honestly, tutorials will only take you so far.

The biggest tip I can give ya is to just open Paint.NET and start spriting away. At first your characters will probably look like shit, don't worry that's how it was for everyone. But just keep working on 'em until you like what ya got and then from there you gotta make other poses so you can use your char in an animation. Good luck!

I guess we all have to start somewhere! I'll see what I can do in Paint.NET, I like to draw, so I'll make an attempt at whipping something up. Thanks!