[zepath]

I draw my sprites in their "product" resolution and usually take it pixel by pixel. I use Paint Shop Pro X which has plenty of features and which I'm very comfortably with having used that series for years. Sometimes I see fantasy art that inspires a particular unit, but instead of trying to resize that and turn it into a .tga for the game, I simply look at the picture while drawing the unit in another window. If you must resize, as Amos says, clean things up beforehand and it will be easier once the image is shrunk. Also, don't get discouraged if it looks like poop. If it looks even remotely like you intended, stick with it, tweak it, and turn it into the kind of image you really want. I've noticed that with human-sized sprites being 31-32 pixels in height (in conformity with the "norm" found in Dominions), changing a single pixel or even the shading of a single pixel can have a significant impact on the way the unit looks in the game and on the battlefield.