Summit Stage SSBB

[Terminal Devastation]

tl;dr this is out of reach for you at the moment. You need to learn the very basics of shading first, then tackle difficult stuff when you're more experienced. If you don't even know how to shade say, a brick or a soccer ball, the chances of succeeding at ice is almost 0.

try something simpler, then we help you from there.

Pardon me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't he learn more if he went back and applied the basics to this or just tackled a small section at a time as he learned new techniques, then worked his way up to it looking like ice. Can't one go straight for the challenge and learn as you progress, with a clear goal in mind? In my opinion, the whole "Avoid hard stuff for now" sounds a lot like the reasoning those stubbornly defending edits use. Let the guy have an ambitious goal and help him apply it step by step. You all should know how it would look each step in the way. If the final is too much, Lead him to the beginner steps. In this specific case, don't worry if it looks like ice yet, work on getting it to looking like a nicely shaded solid object. Should help when it comes to figuring out how to add the ice texture.

Actually my recommendation is to go find some nice arctic backgrounds rather than sprites, and then work on a section of the mountian at a time rather than trying to shade the whole thing at once. You'll have to clean up as you expand but it should look rather nice.
Anyways, the biggest tip I can give with ice is that if its clear rather than frosted ice (which in games it usually is) having patches of darker shade in the midtone may help a bit. Frosted ice is a little more complicated.