Today we are going to go over basic human proportions.
This is one of those things you should practice over and over
I've created a drawing that shows two extremes - "normal" human proportions and the "superhero" type proportions. When I draw I tend to land right in the middle. Something that feels larger than life but not borderline distorted. A lot of comics use the bigger size (and even more bufftasticness) to make their characters feel more heroic.
I drew this sketch on my new wacom tablet, it's a bit shakey but you should get the idea.
Practice sketching this.
It doesn't have to be pretty and neat - mine sure isn't. This will be used as a skeleton to add muscles and detail to. Once you have "base" proportions down you can adjust to evoke different types of characters.
My best teacher used this as a Mr. Miyagi type drill
He said to get 100 sheets of paper, and do 100 drawings of this, filling the whole paper. It's a worthwhile exercise. Make sure to do some measurements. Feel free to also use comic panels that show whole characters and reproduce them IN THE ROUGH (no details, just the figure outline).
My biggest mistake was not hammering myself on FORM. Form trumps detail every time. If you invest time to produce decent form quickly, everything else gets easier.
If you want really great, clean line samples, go here:
Masters of Anatomy
They have free animations like this: