I'm really interested in making an action platformer in the vein of Cave Story and The Iconoclasts, I'm totally fine with coding it, I've done similar stuff in the past, but where I'm getting stuck is on the art. I want to make a vibrant, organic looking environment for my game but all my previous games have used a far blockier art style, think Super Mario Bros. or A Link to the Past.
I'm not really sure about the process of actually making graphics like this, both how I'd actually go about creating the sprites themselves and how I'd represent the levels in game, most of my previous games have used a rigid grid.
So I'm wondering whether anyone here can link me to some good resources on designing organic game environments and handling collisions and rendering in engine for them.
