@Decroded: Why... Why did China come to mind, specifically
Why not Japan? Japan appreciates pixelart way more than China.
@OP: I'm pretty much going to try to restate PixelPiledriver's ideas in my own words here, but:
As far as an all-appealing style goes, I recommend you imitate Call of Duty and Skyrim and make your project in 3d high-resolution. Pixelart, by nature, is already niche; if you want a big, undiscriminating target audience, pixels probably aren't what you're looking for.
To paraphrase your words:
"I want an art style that's cheap (pixelart is cheaper than high-res 3d), that I can draw a lot of very quickly (because I have big plans for my game), which I can animate effortlessly (because animating is boring and hard
), and which is colorful and appeals to everybody (because I want my game to be really popular)!"
Buddy, don't we all. If it were that easy to come up with an aesthetic and style, illustration wouldn't be a job, and neither would animation. There's no one-size-fits-all solution to art, no census will change that. In the end, what you draw has to come from your own preferences and the limitations of your skill. The idea of sacrificing your right to choose your art style in favor of some sort of... democratically-sourced average of all tastes, ought to immediately seem repugnant to anybody who self-identifies as an artist or designer of any kind.
Like, isn't the point of creating something that you can call it your own? Why even make a game if you're not going to individualize it to your own tastes?