Beat em Up sprites

[Sketchasaurus]

When drawing/spriting, it's important to consider everything else before "style" because that's honestly the last aspect of artwork that should ever be considered. Style is something that arises after learning how to use all of the other principles and elements of design and becoming familiar with them. I always think of an "art style" as more of the artist's handwriting, so to speak, so learning all of the proper "sentence structure" for designing logical characters and drawings is more important than mimicking another artist's handwriting.

of course, there's nothing wrong with having influences, but cheapening yourself to one single influence will only limit you in the end. For example: I used to know a bunch of people who limited themselves to drawing based on their favorite animes, which I think has greatly stunted their artistic growth because they won't venture outside of it.

In regards to main character design, I think the color red is an overused trope. You can have a main character with a strong design without using the color red (though this is still up to you in the end) but consider the attitude of the character instead of his/her looks, what about their personality makes them the main character and what makes them the character that the spotlight focuses on?