I would recommend looking into your local market for general "design" and "illustration" rates rather than focusing in on one specific aspect unless you've already established yourself as a pixel artist. If you're in Los Angeles, New York, San Fran, London you are probably going to have access to larger clients that can afford to pay $20-30/hour.  I've only had a few paid pixel art gigs (mostly for Flash games), but they've mostly been for big companies that didn't fight me on $20/$30.  Look at job postings for your market (Monster, classifieds, etc) and break it down by hour.

A Los Angeles designer's salary range is between $45-65/K (based on my ancedotal evidence). If you break that down per hour $21.63 to $31.25 per hour for a year of 40 hour work weeks.  Realistically you would probably want to add  20% to those numbers for freelance work to cover your expenses so $25-$40/hour would be more realistic.  With the age of the Internet all the "local" stuff gets blown out of the water, but it's still not a bad idea to study what a client's city is offering for salary/freelance.

Don't forget that networking and self-promotion is as important as your talent. I consider myself a pretty decent programmer, but I make more than people who are more talented because I've worked hard at connecting with people. Which reminds me... if you have a steady income coming in (even working in some other industry) you can take your time building your client list and possibly take some cheaper jobs to get your foot in the door.  If you do work outside your chosen industry be careful not to let your full time gig wipe out your passion -- it can creep up slowly and it's hard to get back on that horse (believe me).

@Turbo:  Big brother and st0ven would be great interviews as well -- terrific talents.  I'd definitely like to know more about Paul Robertson with his recent Pirate Baby's Cabana Battle Street Fight 2006 thing. If anyone knows a good way to reach that fella lemme know (no response from his email).

@Gil:  From my occasional skimming of the Pixelopolis forum I can tell that Adam Tierny is a terrific asset to the community. I will definitely hit him up.

@Mr.Modem:  I would definitely be interested in that.  Any suggestions on specific artists?

@Helm: We'd definitely love to hit you up...  Working on PJ is a real good time for me most of the time. I love seeing all the terrific work that flows into the gallery.

Umm, sorry if this comes off like a jerk, but I think it's not important who you interview, but what you ask them. I don't think I'm going to be interested if all you ever ask is "so, how did you start with pixel art" and "how did you become badass like that?", nicely intertwined with the occasional "I love your shit man". It doesn't make for really interesting interviewing stuff.

I'm a little cranky tonight, so don't mind me

I'm not quite sure what you expect out of an interview, but if you have a question (or a line of questions) you'd like to see in future interviews hit me up with a PM or just post in this thread.  It's a new feature and we're more than willing to refine the process. 

I totally agree with both of you.  I actually cleaned up the interview quite a bit (it WAS an instant messenger interview), but I will make sure to further edit in the future.

Edit:  I did take out some of the "..." and took out some of the interviewer comments.  Thanks again guys!