The sprites are just edits of existing, free-to-use sprites :< I didn't make them from scratch.
the cloth-heads for the cloth-headed people were done pixel by pixel (but my pixel art skills aren't great). Along with some frankenspriting and palette edits.
The faceless people are palette edits and some pixel editing. I use graphicsgale for all pixel-based editing so I don't really have any brushes handy :)