Emoticon Tutorial Part 1

I noticed that most of the emoticon tutorials here on dA refer entirely to specific software which may be too expensive (e.g. photoshop), or not powerful enough (i.e. MS Paint) for many members of the community.

I know that if the only option presented to me had been to shell out several hundred pounds in order to make emotes, I never would have started.

Good thing is, that isn't the only way.
Paint.NET is a powerful, but most importantly free piece of software which can be used to create emoticons, and this tutorial guides you on how to go about doing that.
Paint.NET can be downloaded from: [link]

I want this to allow people who have wanted to try their hand at emoticons, but haven't been able to due to the cost of photoshop to be able to give it a try.

This is part one of two. Part two discusses the basics of animating emotes with freeware: [link]