Does anyone have a guide to making new versions of components?

[FOTEPX]

Not an entirely new component, but just like, an offshoot of a pre-existing component - such as, let's say, multi-coloured Flipper Extenders.

[cephalopod]

I don't think there's a guide but that stuff is fairly simple... If you're doing some programming course like you said you are you should be able to work it out :P
Hint: For Flippermakers you need to copy some gmf's, edit those new gmf's to have a different bitmap (with same amount of characters as the old one) in the Maps folder using Notepad++ (important) and add some Styles to the flippermaker.txt and Styles folder.

[Trovaner]

Based on what you are planning on doing, I'd recommend Sage's skinning tutorial.