December 28 - Mr. Lanky

Pick up a sunflower and count the florets running into its centre, or count the spiral scales of a pine cone or a pineapple, running from its bottom up its sides to the top, and you will find an extraordinary truth: recurring numbers, ratios and proportions.

~ Charles Jencks

Reginald Lankershim wanted to be an artist, but was born out of proportion - his legs, arms and torso were abnormally long. 

Because of this people rarely saw him for what he wanted to be, and regarded him how they thought he should be.  To keep himself safe from the cruelty of his peers, he conceded to their plans - he played basketball.

This balloon was really just a stupid way to intentionally think about proportion.  For the most part I tend to wing it on proportions, I know that arms extend a little past the waist, legs are typically a little longer than arms, etc.  I also realize that you don't have to conform to standard proportions, but this is at least a starting point.

The image at the left was found on How to Draw Manga Characters blog post by Preston Stone.  Notice that the size of the head can be used as a general guide to the body proportions, so unless you know exactly what type/size of head you are making, that is likely the best starting point to get something in more realistic proportions.

The way to make things more comic/cartoon-y is to exaggerate something larger (not smaller, it just looks weird), but do so in a logical way.   A larger head should not strictly grow vertically up, it offsets all proportions, it would occupy more of the chest area as well.