To answer that question, I would do something episodic like squeenix did with FFIV on WII. Either the first episode bombs and you walk away without divesting yourself of your life savings, or the game does well and you use part of the profit to release another high quality episode. Rinse lather and repeat.

I can answer a couple of these.

1.) When to AA or outline?  I understand what AA is now, I believe.  It is for smoothing lines, curves, and eliminating jagged edges.  What I don't understand fully is when do you want to AA and when do you want to instead go for naked lines, or even a dark outline such as what you see with sprites sometimes.  Does anyone ever combine outlines that define the line art with AA?  

4.) What is sel out?  Is it when you have broken and different colored outlines, or is it when you outline a side and leave another side unoutlined, or is it both?  What are the purposes of both of those things, if both of those are types of sel out.  

Selout is a stupid and confusing term created by myself a decade ago(!).

It is actually just a combination of AA & outlining.

You can have lines without any AA, or no lines with lots of AA, or a combination of both. Sometimes you can AA a line, which breaks its unbroken lineness, but can, when applied with restraint, make stuff look smoother.

Don't break the lines too much, or you will end up with lots of ugly dark pixels around the silhouette of your sprite.

It works best for larger sprites, like stuff you find in fighting games. At smaller sizes it usually does more damage than good.

It's considered intermediate to advanced on the skills scale. You should practice and understand how to make good looking AA and good looking outlines in isolation before attempting it.

This. It looks yummy. You could even drop the palette restrictions for the backgrounds and go full blown CG.

After posting I realized you never really said you wanted critique on your presentation. Perhaps having myself and others giving you unsolicited advice was inappropriate. If I offended you, I sincerely apologize.