What is LF2 style?

[YinYin]

Next: the colour palette, shading, shaping and possible tools.
This 200% Davis shall assist us with that:

Let's look at it then shall we?

The colour palette is held very simple: hair, skin, bandages, pants/shoes and jacket. That's just 5 with only the blue really sticking out (everything else having less saturation). This simplicity applies to all LF2 characters and few of them have a high colour contrast (example: Louis' cape and armor).

The shading in general is achieved with only two different shades per colour surface using a simple brush. An exception here are the lines between the white bandages. You may argue that skin and shoes or pants have more shades, but here is why I say they don't:
The face/hands and the chest skin are really two different colour surfaces (if they were not shaded yet). That way both only have two shades. The same applies to his shoes. Unshaded they are already divided into top and soles.

The pants lastly were not shaded with a simple brush. I'd say they were pre shaded the same way as everything else and later given more structure with a smudge tool, but it could also just be a smoother brush.

So yeah, simplicity all the way. Starting out with drawing a few simple shapes using the main colours and then shading them in with just one more shade each and an LF2 character can look as good as Davis.

1. Sketch/Proportions
   
2. Colors/Shading/Details
   
3. Render/Outline
   
4. Animation (steps 1-3 with a bigger picture in mind)

The MyBB list feature does not allow it, but this list actually needs a step 0. Character Design. (I don't think I can say a lot about it though. At least not using just Davis.)

What would be next? Rendering and outline! We got a pretty big Davis here so let me shrink him down to game size quickly:

Aww crap what's this? I guess you get what this will be about :D
Considering all the small black dots that were on LF2s sprite sheets I'd say Marti didn't pay much attention to this initially. And if you worked clean and have the right image interpolation when scaling down you may not have to worry about this point at all, but as you can see here it can end ugly.

The analyzing part itself will be pretty short, so I will also tell you how I do this process.
(Be sure to tell me how you do it!)