1up actually explained what pixel art is all about to him, and Mr. Hamburger there actually outright rejected the whole idea (and even ridiculed it a bit). All he wanted were hints on faking pixel art with easier method. So I'm not sure if we would really feel good helping him on that.

Either way, given his attitude, we're probably better off without him around.

Well, the really old arcade games like Pong are better if you're completely new to programming anything. It'll teach you basic display, motion, user input, colisions, etc., and shouldn't take more than a couple of hours to get right. If the guy already knows that kind of thing there's no reason to go that basic.

But Pong has little in common with that example you gave, since both game mechanics don't overlap, so it's not quite what I'm suggesting. In your example, if instead the guy creates a little block-based platform game engine to experiment with maps, collision detection, basic physics, etc., and if he works with a simpler character and tileset at first, he'll learn and use useful bits of these skills faster. In fact, I already suggested him to skip the base engine and use one of the existing ones, so he gets to the juicy parts faster. This all helps on keeping the developer reassured that he's being productive and evolving his skills.

Of course, there's nothing stopping him in attempting something closer to the desired quality of the ultimate project, but I believe that pouring all his effort into making the perfect sprites and tilesets, or the perfect engine at first attempt seems like a bad idea. I'm just saying  it's good to keep in mind the idea that what you are creating may not be the final thing yet, and it will probably suck. Making these little, self-contained experiments are just a good way to perfect those individual skills you'll need without the rest of the context to get in the way, and without that feeling that you failed at the entire thing. It's a method to build up confidence. Eventually, with all the experience acquired, he should be so comfortable with the entire process and the individual parts that all these skills will converge into a single thing.

"I'll create a framework that works as a reusable engine" is a sentence that 99.9999% of the time equals: "Here's a game I'll never finish, in fact, I won't even reach a playable demo of any kind".

Oh, and this is absolutely true.  

The way I see it, learning the basics doesn't have to be dull or boring. Unless his idea is completely revolutionary, he most likely can break apart certain elements of his big project into smaller mini-games with known mechanics, where he'll learn how to do all the necessary things separately, which might be faster and easier to get the hang of initially. Hit detection, animation, sprite and tile management, game logic, basic AI, states, interfaces, counters, timers, etc. He doesn't have to complete one of these clone games entirely, mind you. I'm just talking about identifying the basic game mechanics in his big project and converting them into their own little study project. The arcade game suggestion works because I see that a lot of the old arcade games have their entire gameplay based on a simple game mechanic, so they're a good subject for study.

The big project will involve all these elements working together at once, but if he doesn't know how to do each one of this things well enough he might feel a bit lost, and the project will feel bigger and harder than it actually is. I'm not saying it won't be a learning experience, it most certainly will, but breaking apart the basics and studying them separately, in something practical you can fool around with, seems to be a more effective strategy for learning new sets of skills.

An analogue would be trying to learn an advanced piano piece, both hands at once, without even knowing the basic fingering technique or without having mastered hand independence. That would just be frustrating and disappointing, and might do more immediate damage to your spirit and excitement than starting with something smaller.

An upshot I see with all of this is that you can mature the idea even more while you study the basic elements, and it will probably help you polish it even more since you'll be getting some first hand practical experience with each element now.

But I admit, the entire process could make you lose your drive, but that really depends on how you respond to this kind of thing. I still think it's a better strategy, it's just up to you to make it interesting and still relevant. Just remember: you can usually accomplish most things if you just work hard enough, long enough. It's really much more a matter of willpower than method, since you can always change your methods, but you'll always need to be motivated to go with them.

Either way, good luck!

Unfortunately, I don't think I can work on another project - I've planned out this game practically head to toe

This is why I recommend you to start with cloning some existing games. It's a good learning experience and you don't need to plan much, the mechanics and gameplay are already well known.

Mathias is right, if you start with a huge project you're probably going to fail, so don't waste the good project now.

You should reupload the images. They are resampled, the pixels are all blurry.