When making sprites, I normally make body parts and redraw them in different positions to build new full-body poses with. In the case of the first frame, however, I do it like this:

1 - Start with a skeleton figure to work out the basic shape. I tend to use pose references here, assuming the idle stance is anything other than simply standing straight up.

2 - Color blobs are used to help define how the sprite will be shaped with fleshing. This is a technique I learned from VGR. It's used for being easy to modify, allowing you to quickly get the shape you're looking for.

3 - Color blobs are outlined and shaded.

4 - Make a new layer and add color blobs for back parts. The reason I wait for these is because the CBs have a tendency to merge, which makes it a bad idea to do both layers right away.

5 - Outline back parts, and tweak the shapes and shading where needed.

6 - Buck peaches.

As for why I sprited Renamon, I needed more practice with digitgrade legs; they're really tough for me. Hope it turned out OK.

Also, I think doing full sprite sheets is still too time-consuming, so I might just take commissions for a few frames for now, you know, enough to make a sprite comic with. Again, they'll be using my scaling system so they fit in well with most 16-bit era sprites.