Since no one replied to this, and you must be feeling down about that,
being a newbie and all, I'll help to answer some of your questions.
First off, fingerstyle is a technique of playing guitar, and there is no "proper"
way to play guitar, everyone has their own style and their own personal technique
and taste, which is good, because it keeps music different, unique and interesting.
Before learning how to play any style or technique or guitar, it is important that
you learn all the basics of guitar playing first. You need to learn how to strum,
how to mute strings so that you dont play extra notes when youre playing a particular
chord, how to pick strings, how to pluck strings, how to play chords/power chords/barre
chords/open chords, what a capo is, etc etc.
Without the basics of guitar playing, learning how to play fingerstyle guitar would be like
groping around in a dark room, because you need to know your notes and your fretboard
and playing techniques like hammer ons and pull offs before you can play fingerstyle.
I suggest you either pick up guitar on your own, kinda just pick some of your favourite songs and look at tabs and figure it out slowly by listening to songs, or use youtube, to figure out what is what. theyve got good videos on there these days. you can learn fingerstyle ince youre comfortable with playing guitar.
There are too many different types of guitars to list here and they all sound different, but broadly speaking there are classical, acoustic and electric guitars. most fingerstyle players use acoustic guitars i think, maybe some use electrics, i dont really know, and your tone is affected greatly by the kind of pickups you use. Single coil pickups are clearer and brighter, but also noisier once gain/overdrive comes into the picture. Humbuckers are perfect for rock-type tones, and tend to produce bassier outputs whilst sacrificing the single note clarity of the single coil.
Different amplifiers sound different, and depending on their manufacturers can range from being good for certain kinds of music. Research this on your own, according to your preference. Some well known names include Vox, Marshall, Mesa-Boogie, Hughes and Kettner, Orange, Dr. Z, Blackstar, Fender.
Guitar pedals, depending on what type of pedal we're talking about, typicalli alter the electrical signal between the guitar and the amplifier in order to modify the sound being produced. Distortion/overdrive pedals add a certain amount of gain to your sound, whilst other effects like Wah-Wah and fuzz add a certain unique sound to your guitar (think Metalica, Nirvana, respectively). Other modulation-type effects like flanger, phaser, delay, reverb, tremolo all do different things, by speeding up, slowing down, altering the pitch of your signal and give it different interesting sounds.
I could keep on typing but im tired, so i hope this helps in some way.
Good luck and dont give up, keep on playing.
