Hey there, welcome to Pixelation.
What's to be scared of? People help people here. You might get strong crits but it's a good place.
Sprite/background separation is usually done with outlines, contrast and saturation.
Your style will probably not include outlines, so instead you can shift the background to a higher key/lower contrast and desaturate it, while doing the opposite for your sprites.
That's pretty much all it comes down to, trading realism for readability.