Gau dressed in Locke's outfit

You realize, hex editing isn't really much different than sprite editing?
Opening up a hex editor and looking at a wall of hex values isn't really much different than looking at a wall of pixels. You don't make sprite sheets zoomed out to full page, you zoom in where you can see pixels.

Do you know the exact binary value of every color? I sure don't, but that doesn't stop you from using it. Place enough in the right order, you get a picture. Place enough hex in the right order you make that picture move.

Point being, its easy. Just can't let the zoomed out version intimidate you, or expect perfection on the first attempt. Applying rather small patches/bug fixes (with good readme files) manually instead of depending entirely on IPS files to match up is a good start, and event editing requires less math...