Whenever I'm not in the mood for stitching but want to make progress on this project I go back to the pattern making.
I've collected all the sprites I want to use and saved them in a size I can see the pixels easily. I also went through and matched the colours in https://threadcolormatcher.github.io/. But the grid and the icons I'm going through a bit more slowly. I stole the icons themselves from google and the sprites are directly from the pokemon games so I'm not going to put the patterns out in a usable state for fear of being sued by Nintendo, so apologies on that.
However the tools I'm using are mainly the internet and the paint program SAI. I found that the program is well optimized and normally used for sketching but the transform tool is very responsive and I found it the best of my options for lining up pixels and the grid. Sai is a one time purchase so I do recommend the program if you also do digital sketching.
Starting out I just used the grid but I found the icons do help a lot. I don't think I could use it without the colours in the background though.
