Thanks! This has been really helpful. I have started the motions of creating an air-ship themed tileset. I have experience making cartoony, yet detailed pseudo sprites, and this is starting to look good.

I am lacking a bit of eyecandy and tile variance, but I have multiple types of hurt things, like flame jets and helicopter blades, but I have a good amount of tile shapes.

It's ms-painty, but with a little shading. I also have relativly good masking.