Character for a brawler

[havocplague]

I'm looking for some C&C on this brawler char. He's super early and very wip, so feel free to help me correct my horrible anatomy and all the banding. He's supposed to be a super hero / super stylized char, so not being perfectly anatomically correct is fine. But I'm curious, what do you think about the length of his legs? My original version was shorter, but  felt too thin. And besides, everybody knows, friends don't let friends skip leg day!

[big brother]

I would start by blocking in the main forms. Don't worry about keeping the pixel outlines clean or adding AA, you can do that later.

It's important to have Tom Platz legs. They are guaranteed to scare children and small dogs.

[havocplague]

Attempted to block in some muscular structure to his legs, but lower body anatomy is still very new to me. Also looked at some superman illustrations, not because they are anatomically correct, but because I thought they might work well with illustrating that kind of muscle mass on this size.

[Decroded]

Just roughing in an edit and now I'm out of time.

Finding it more useful to build up the muscles by "painting" with various size brushes and making use of light source (unbalanced and nastily at this stage).
I dunno if this is right but maybe you've become a slave to the line from seeing so much line work in other art, but perhaps work rougher until you get the right forms and let the lines will follow.
Let the lines work for you, not the other way around 

[havocplague]

Thank you Decroded, that's an excellent edit! I've tried just "blobbing" in the shapes, but my knowledge of anatomy is so low that it didn't really work. But I'll study what you did, and try to improve. Thanks again!

[Decroded]

Thank you Decroded, that's an excellent edit! I've tried just "blobbing" in the shapes, but my knowledge of anatomy is so low that it didn't really work. But I'll study what you did, and try to improve. Thanks again!

Sorry I don't have any good references but maybe just look around at stuff like this...
http://www.myweightlifting.com/images/muscle-anatomy-chart.jpg

Also don't copy too exactly from my edit lol.
It was almost 5am when I was doodling that then posted when I woke up and I can already see things I want to fix *resists urge* 

[havocplague]

So this is where I am today, trying to "learn, not copy". Hopefully, I'll get time to go over him once more, and use what I've learned from your edit and looking at other references, to improve.

[Decroded]

Ah looks like you picked up an error from my edit.
Scrappy line edit (ignore lighting):

Still wouldn't recommend that as a reference but hopefully it helps correct a few things in the quad muscles and knee.

Here's some references that will hopefully help:
http://www.muscleandfitness.com/sites/muscleandfitness.com/files/styles/large/public/Quads_2.jpg
http://vallejo.ural.net/1997/002a.jpg
http://aldgerrelpa.deviantart.com/art/Wun-Dar-342309711
http://bida999.deviantart.com/art/Night-Monster-final-196986238


Lets refer to Sagat below done in cartoony style pixel art for some other tips:

 - You don't need to draw a line between every muscle. Remember there's also a layer of skin smoothing things out no matter how buff the guy is (hmm skinless body builder could be fun:. Sometimes you can just imply lines by how the light and dark works. Notice there is clear areas of light and dark? There's lines where the angle is greater and the rest is implied. Shadowy areas tend to have less lines since there is less light there.
 - Dark lines are generally not used in the lighter areas, just the next darkest shade.
 - Don't highlight every single muscle. It makes it kinda look like a bunch of bumps popping up from an otherwise flat surface. Notice Sagat doesn't even have the lightest shade anywhere below his shoulders? They've picked a useful light source to work with here and followed through with it. Notice in Ax-Man (http://aldgerrelpa.deviantart.com/art/Wun-Dar-342309711), a different but still very clear light source with only selective highlighting.

[havocplague]

More great C&C, thanks! I really hope that I get a chance to go over the char a few more times, to really get the stuff you talk about into my spriting. Hopefully, if nothing else, it will be helpful during the next few sprites Thanks again, I'm really grateful, it's always nice when someone takes the time to teach!

[havocplague]

So, trying to implement some of the excellent advice given by Decroded, and looking at the whole thing on a crt screen (yes, that's the target hardware) I tried to implement a more streamlined, less colored version. Unfortuenetly I won't get much time during the upcoming weeks to work on this, need to spend more time doing actual work. But it was still a really good excercise, and hopefully I can take time during a weekend to fix the last details, rework the face and give him some proper details. Thanks for the feedback, I'll return with the results