Amigurumi....ah'ma gonna struggle more like.....!

I enjoy crochet and am loving all the amigurumi work I am seeing around the internet. According to Wikipedia amigurumi is the Japanese trend of making small stuffed animals and items with anthropomorphic features. It is usually made with a smaller gauge crochet hook to create a tighter more compacted piece which wont allow the stuffing to show through.

I've seen a lovely little Minion design that I thought was very witty and cute but I am struggling with the pattern for a few reasons.

1. I've never followed a crochet pattern. I was taught  by my Nana and she was a 'by eye' crafter so I have always been used to looking at things and deducting how it should be shaped. Being reductionist about it, all crocheting and knitting boils down to starting with the number of stitches needed and increasing or decreasing as needed to shape before casting off. All fair and well and it is a logic skill I've translated to a lot of work or home challenges but if there is a pattern then surely it is quicker to do this than spend time rethinking it.
2. Crochet patterns come in American and UK versions...(who knew, at least I didn't) and each has different names for the stitches.
3. Because I learned aged around 5yrs old I watched, learned and copied so none of my crochet stitches, apart from the chain, have any names whatsoever. This means I am on a hiding to nothing as neither a UK or US pattern makes any sense. 

I've tried working it out using the fabulous google and youtube and some great bloggers I read who provide tutorials but somehow it is not sticking in my head. I think the issue is because my crochet style of learning is predominantly 'see one, do one' then I probably need to get a clever person to do me a tutorial so that I can put a name/s to a stitch visually while creating it.

This is my shameful skelly attempt at crocheting after many, many years absence. Just for info that is meant to be a granny SQUARE!