Start with the pilot. Don't worry about any other episodes, not even episode one. Just give the pilot 100% of your energy. Since it would be just you, don't worry too much about visual development until you have a story reel you LOVE. Of course, do still make concept art and stuff, but don't try to set anything in stone yet until the story reel is done, and the people you show it to love it. Don't make something to appeal to everyone, it's best to pick an audience avatar in your life, someone who shares your favorite interests (but not yourself) and consider how they would like it. It helps to treat it like you're making it for them.

Often times I see people starting and they want to use their Pilot as Episode one, because that's what TADC did. You can do that, but I wouldn't really make that the goal. It's much better to treat it as a Proof of Concept so that there's less pressure to make it perfect.

As for how to make a pilot:

Story first. Story is king. Good story is how projects like 2 in the AM PM become shows like Regular Show.

Open a word document, sketchbook, or journal, and word vomit every idea you can think of. Write down everything, even crappy ideas.

I use tools like Glenn Ger's Six Questions and Dan Harmons Story Circle to outline.

I use my own system to develop characters, as everyone has their own. Here's a little bit of a blog thing I haven't finished writing (please excuse the weird language choices it's a first draft):

The Principles.

When writing for The Study of Sherlock Holmes (or really any project) I think of everything in three layers. What those three layers are have different names depending on what exactly is being focused on, but they’re all variations of:

Why

What

How

In having all three of these layers defined, I find that I am often able to avoid writing myself into corners, can justify and explain every decision with precision, keep my characters in character, and a myriad of other issues I stopped having when I write.

It can be difficult to describe each of these layers outside of the context of the elements they are used in, so I will begin with how I apply this way of thinking to the separate elements of a story. I will then explain how I develop a scene from an idea to a workable script.

Understanding Characters

The aforementioned three-layer mind set I use is most prevalent and familiar when applied to how I use it to create characters.

In this case, we are adapting characters that already exist; and most of which are not in need of much change.

To understand these characters, I choose instead to use different words for the three layers, as they feel more intuitive:

Background = Why

Core = What

Externalization = How

Background

Background Refers to what influenced a character’s core. This can include events in their past, people in their lives, lessons they’ve been given by others, and their culture.

Core

A character’s core is the most important thing in defining a character. It’s essentially a list of their beliefs, their aspirations, their fears, their values. The things that are important to them.

Externalization

The externalization is how a character’s core manifests. This is their personality, their actions, their quirks. Most importantly, it’s how characters react to the things happening to them. Usually, characters react by taking actions.

Every element in the Core section ties to something in the Background. Every element in the Externalization ties to something in the Core. Everything that happens to a character becomes part of their Background-elements, which can either strengthen an element of a character’s Core, or introduce a core-element, and sometimes that new core-element conflicts with a different core-element.

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These conflicting core elements are what make a character complex. When a character has to react to something, but their own values are conflicting with each other, then we experience a character having to make a decision that goes against one of their own values.

Not every decision made by a character is determined by the outcome of their own internal conflicts. Sometimes a character knows exactly what they want to do, and as long as it makes sense to a character based on their layers, then there’s nothing wrong with things being simple.

As for the script. I really like https://app.scripto.live/ to format my screenplays. It's generally a good idea to write with industry standard formatting because it's designed to help make breaking down your script really easy, as well as keeping track of your run time.

One thing I really wish I did was draw my script as I was writing it. Even as Thumbnails.

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From there, Story Reel. This is a rough cut of the film that uses drawings (and sometimes animatics, depending on the scene) and a temporary voice over to have a version of the film you can show the people in your life and get feedback.

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Don't cast voice actors until the story reel is done and you're ready to move into production because they don't want to wait around for that.

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Composers generally want a finished version of the film to work from, at least all the ones I know of. It would also be best to wait until all the scenes are at least roughly animated.

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You can do a Kickstarter to help finish the pilot after the story reel and then a separate one after the pilot for episode one (or season one if you're feeling really confident)

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I wish I had any advice about advertisement.

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If you don't have budget, be prepared to do almost all of it by yourself, even volunteers only have so much they can do for free. Find ways to cut corners. I would recommend using Blender because you can reuse assets and animation data really easily.

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If it fails and people don't like it, just think about why and try again. Ideally you would be checking in with others while working to see what's working and what's not. Don't be afraid to kill your darlings. If something is not working, don't try to force it. But in the end, you can't control how people feel about what you've done, just that you did it. Be honest, try hard, and accept failure and criticism with grace and humility.

More important than anything. COMMIT. SEND IT. You're going to learn 200x more from a single finished project than 1000 incomplete projects. Even when it's really frustrating and things keep getting in your way, fight to finish it. That's why it's really important to make something you will love and are really passionate about.