Where can I learn the basics of 2d graphics? Getting discouraged here ... Thread

For the past few months on-and-off, I've been trying to make a game. I've written a lot of notes about levels, mechanics, story, even character designs, and I've done a lot of GameMaker and Godot tutorials on knock-offs like Flappy Bird, Helicopter, generic top-down action games, etc. I've made music for a few games before so I'm comfortable there too. The five pillars of game development are programming, design, sound, narrative, and graphics, and with practice I can get the first four.

But for the LIFE of me I cannot make pixel graphics. I can draw chairs, desks, floors, crates --- static things. But I can't animate for shit and practice is getting me nowhere. I'm just trying a simple 4-frame animation of a person walking in four directions, I can't figure it out, I just get frustrated and try the next day only to encounter the same problem. It's really discouraging. All the tutorials I've done have come with sprite packs, so I didn't have to do any animation. I'd ask an artist to just do all the work, but I'd need a prototype to show them what I'm aiming at first, and churning out my own graphics for that is a total chore.

Graphics can be a big block if you are doing them yourself. I'd recommend looking at art and cartoon creation books. These will give you good tutorials on walking animation patterns etc. How much frames of animation you make depends on what type of game you are trying to make.

For an 8bit feel 3 walking frames can be good enough, depending on the game style, For one of my games I ended up with 8 frames for basic walking plus a bunch more for jumping, skipping, sitting, sleeping etc. It's a big time sink!

This part is definitely more art than science!