First of all:
You just need paint and the basic notion of anatomy and geometry, no much, no more.
Something Like This:
Step 1. Make the outlines, making a sketch of you work.
Step 2. Add the color
Step 3. Shade it and remove the outlines, Darken, midcolor, lighten... Ohh its so simple, no!
Step 4. Ragnarok use a maximum of 12 tonalities of same color to shade a sprite, but in various sprites, we se a minimum of 5 tonalities. Somewhere in this forum, a print with the Ragnarok pallete template can be found, and used for a base ^^
You dont need the 12 colors to shade you sprite, but use a minimum of 5 colors to make him look smooth.
See the oficial sprites to learn the style.
A image for reference even help when you making a themed sprite, like the diabolus manteau, uses his illustration to make his sprites.
You can check for hook functions pc->can_insert_card and pc->can_insert_card_into.
First check is card can be used by itself, second check if this card can be inserted to this item