Hi Joseph,
If you wont take more than a week or two, I'm guessing the other contenders wouldn't mind. I don't think they're all finished anyway.
ALSO, you can tell your mom that pixel art literally took me from absolute poverty (literally ghetto and high school drop out) to making over 40k a year for my first gig and drastically more now that I've been in the industry for a few years. I was also comepletely self-taught so I don't have a massive college loan debt looming over my head. (not that I'm recommended you to avoid college if you have the chance to go.)
However, keep in mind that technology is improving dramatically fast, and while its always important to have strong hard-core pixel skills, you WONT make it in the industry (even for mobile phones) in a few years unless you can also do low poly 3d stuff and character animation. So at the very least, start learning DAZ studio and poser sort of programs and ideally also start to learn 3d max. This will insure far greater job security and a vastly improved skill-set and just make you a more powerful artist all around. Its a necessary investment.
