i really like where this one is headed, definitely my kind of game. However the main character should never be punished with a 4 frame run cycle, that's just cruel!

I added 2 frames, it could still use some clean-up but I think it helps a bunch. I'm not sure what the technical limitations are on the GBA, but surely 2 extra run frames wont hurt...

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The difficulty of making a tutorial is that there's no one way to do it, every tool does it a little differently and seeing a tutorial in 3DStudio is probably not going to help you because you probably don't have 3DStudio and other tools while they may be similar can also be totally different.  Personally I use Silo for modeling ($100), Ultimate Unwrap for UV mapping (35$ ish), and PaceMaker for animation  (24 GBP).  You could substitute Wings3d for the modeler since it's free, I've used it but I prefer silo's interface.

As far as UV mapping, rigging, animating.. all that stuff goes there's no real way to know if what your doing is going to work without going thought he full process several times. It's just like any other art, there's no better way to learn it then to bang your head against the wall repeatedly for hours. The tools get more complex and as a result so does the learning curve. It could take you a week or two to get comfortable in whatever 3d modeling package you use, and at least a few days to get a basic grasp of UV mapping, rigging, and animating.

I don't know about you, but low poly modeling and texturing feels a lot like the 3d equivalent of pixelart in 2d. Great stuff.

Personally I really like your use of silhouettes (sp?) on the foreground and background layers. The only layer with any real detail is the main tile layer and even then you've manged to keep it to a lot of repeated elements without making it look too tiled. It's possible that you could create a lot of content for a game like this and have it look really good without getting to burned out.   Nice design overall!