Pencil Tool or vectors?

[darkblob32]

So since I'm new to this, I dont quite understand what is meant when you say vectors don't count as sprites. Could someone stand to elaborate this for me?

Also, could someone offer really good tutorials for animating sprites? So far for pixel art I have:
http://www.natomic.com/hosted/marks/mpat/links.html
http://www.derekyu.com/?page_id=218

here is an example of what I have done. please give input even though it is not one of the assets we are using. I hand drew every frame.