Hello,

For me, vector graphics are a little bit easiest to do than pixel graphics. Furthermore, you can draw the different parts of the character bodys separately, and then combien them to make poses.

I'm also fond of vector graphics, they are well suited to a simple cartoony style and can be combined with pivot animation. Inkscape is a free vector graphics program, though you need something else for animation.

Alternatively you can buy premade sprites and save your time for other aspects of game development.

I'm a fan of the "taking pictures" approach, but on 3d models. You can animate them and then take pictures of the animations to get what you want. This method generally takes longer than "spriting" to get that first frame, but once you do, animation is quicker in many cases, and making changes is also quicker, more so the more you have already done and need changing. It is much quicker to change the color of part of a 3d model and re-render all the animation than it is to re-color a bunch of pixel art frames, unless you are smart about using palettes and just change a single palette color.