well i did the whole thing in photoshop with a 1pixel pencil, and the fill bucket...
did the shading the same but i aa'ed it with a 1 pixel pencil blur ....
so i assume that thats a no-no right , using "blur"....
ya, using the pencil tool is exactly what you want to do, but not the brush, blur, opacity or any other effects. pixel art in its truest form is each pixel placed with care by hand (although the fill tool is accepted). the way i taught my brother that seemed to help him out is "if you dont have strict control over the pixels and the colors (ie anti-aliasing/blur), its not pixel art."
keep it up, that line art looks great