I told not about this particular piece, but about design in general, reducing process to very basics. It was answer about death of imagination - you take how many more inspirations, make your visual vocabulary broad and you will not be stuck.

While original Chrono Trigger sprite was a main primer, picture differs a lot from it's source, so it is not an edit. In fact, except the head it not resembles original at all other than in color scheme and three pixels on hair:

http://www.ljplus.ru/img4/p/i/pinwizz/Schala_VS_Schala.bmp

However, I'd say that while copying other people's styles is certainly one of the main and necessary ways of learning, showing piece which takes same style and same character is obvious way to become suspected in copying the rest.

Why not to draw your own character?