Good sprite design is based around silhouettes. Try taking your favorite fighting game characters and study the shape. Chances are, even without any detail, the character will still be recognizable.
Actually big brother, all my fighter sprites are drawn starting witha gray blob, and than a silhouettes, including this one. It's the only way I've always drawn them, since using line art seems to confuse where certain shades belong. It seems I over shade some areas of the figure, and call it my "style" which I guess, is the wrong thing to do. Anyways, to understand what exactly I'm talking about, here's an animation of the steps I ussually take to draw a fighter, with the previous character as the example:
Taking Adarias's crits to heart, I changed the stance of the fighter, and showed the difference between oldest and newest:
Vers. 1: the older sprite
Vers. 2: newer sprite, with more weight on the legs, with original upper body, and pallete
Vers. 3A: newest sprite, with more weight on the legs, and arms closer to the face for a better, guarded stance as Adaria's had asked
Vers. 3B: Same as version 3A except the contrast is popped a wee bit..
Thanks for the help err' body!