I'm hardly an expert, I'll admit. But I do love fingerstyle and have occasionally tried out some of the "classical" techniques. I also know a man who has taken many years of classical lessons, and a girl who is just learning and following a classical-type instruction.
Several things come to mind as being very different. But I'm sure there are more classical players here who can better describe and clarify my observations (and possibly correct any errors I make).
With classical music, hand positon (both left and right) seem to be stessed a lot. Both the man and girl I know, will not "hook" their fretting-hand thumb to play the sixth (or fifth string). They will not rest their pinky/third finger of their playing hand on the guitar. They also use their first, second and third fingers w/ thumb to pick (even when you could play the whole song with just your first or first/second finger and thumb - like an easier song).
"Non-educated" (for lack of a better term) players, don't seem to have a collection of techniques that are considered mandatory. Hook the thumb (Ritchie Havens is a very good example of the extreme), rest the fingers on the soundboard, play with as many (or few) fingers as you think is good. Lasse Johansson writes in one of his books that he sometimes will fret two notes on adjacent strings with one finger - by placing the finger in between the two strings. Never really tried it that much (but on a really narrow neck it seems like a good option - you'd have to have awful fat fingers to do that on a classical, though...). Seems more like you can do what comes natural, and just develop your own technique with practice.
I'd find it to be a bit of a dilema to choose one way or the other. If I had to do it again, my lack of patience would still sway towards the more casual approach to playing.
But with a good classical background, you'd have a pretty solid start on most styles of fingerstyle playing, I think.
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