First of all, welcome to Pixelation.

Nice that you're sketching out the style first. I think your style could work, definitely. But it could benefit from attention to the lighting and forms of your characters. Also maybe remove the eye highlights, how much are they helping?
Here's an example with batman:

Oh also, you can post images at regular size, the forum has a built-in zoom feature. Click to zoom in, shift+click to zoom out.