I started doing replays about 1 year ago.
my idol was Swexx,his dms and his style got me into replay making.
I wasn't looking at streams,tutorial but I was just looking at Swexx's replay thread (yea all the fucking replays) and tryed to edit before a boom hit or before an insane move and see in which position the joints were.
then I started doing replays in sp cuz I got bored to just saw them.
this was march 2015 if I remember correctly.
I totally fucked up trying to copy Swexx's style and I deciced to keep playing in mp until I just saw a sexy man called "Larfen" streaming,I watched every stream about him (yt channel,twitch ecc.).
his play style was very different from Swexx's one and I tryed to imitate him too cuz I was a fuckboy and I couldn't find my own.
this time was around april,may 2015.
I decided to send him a replay called "Hook Manipulation" and I was really impressed when he said that the idea was good but the movements needed some works so I decided to find my own style by mixing Swexx's one and Larfen's one.
after that I decided to open a replay thread on 2 may of 2015,still remember Demon and his cnc.
I saw that people started to like my replays so I kept going to do them.
without noticed it my style was mixed with pusga and Larfen and I kinda liked it so I decided to not give a fuck about realism and focus on momentum,speed and dms.
the thread grew fast to 9k views.

after all that jezz I'd say that u r right pusga,without an idol it's much more difficult to be better at replays and create ur own style.

EDIT:dayum this post is so long...