I decided to switch my efforts over to an RPG Maker game with hand painted assets as well as the pixel art. These are mostly all original assets. Still looking for a name. Oddly enough, the hand painted asset approach takes about the same amount of time that the pixel art does. Here are some screenshots of some WIP:

Very distinctive look. If it were isometric, this would look just like a 90's CRPG, and I mean that as a pretty high compliment.

Did some more assets/tiles today, including this hut in Photoshop. My efforts with Spriter to design the sprite animations is working great too, I'll post one of them soon.

I decide to switch spriting/animation apps to DragonBones from Spriter due to my need for meshes. I hope they keep it free. I draw the layers enormous in Photoshop, then transfer the art to DragonBones to do the animation, then shrink it down to size. Here are a couple of samples:

Another WIP screen shot with a couple of roaming enemies.

I think I have enough resources now to finally start working on the first chapter. Obviously there will be many more edits and changes to what I already have...