Character Design

My art direction is early 8 bit pixel grpahics so the graphics should be somewhere between the Artai and the NES. Colour Scheme should be like White, red and Blue (like sonic, Mario, Dig Dug and Bomber Man).

Here are some of the character sketches I've done:

I've approach to character design in a different way and I've played with lego:

The character I've created in Flash below looks like Earthbound/pokemon/ Link character:

Here are some websites I've checked out for character design research:
Computer Arts - 20 character design tips
Digital Arts - Games Character
Digital Arts - How to create commercial characters