Figure Drawing

Out of all the skills I'll need to make my first vn, my art skills are probably the least adequate.

I'm a decent draftsman, but my figure-drawing-from-scratch skills are clunky.  Different parts of the human body continue to befuddle me, specifically where the limbs connect to the body, and the different muscles in the legs and arms. 

I need to get comfortable enough with drawing the human figure if my game will look halfway decent.

I'm starting with a bunch of tutorials on deviantART that show you the basics of figure drawing.  There are dozens of great tutorials on the site, all with different techniques.  Today I think I'll tackle head, neck and shoulder proportions.  These have always given me much grief.

But first, here's where I'm at with figure drawing without use of any reference material.

Soooo, not sure what's going on here.  He should probably have a penis, first of all.  But we'll tackle that area later on, when I'm feeling more confident.  Or maybe never, since I didn't plan my game to be showing off wang.  :0)

I AM planning to make the sprites somewhat cartoony, but not this cartoony.  In other words, his head is too freaking big.  I don't know why his hips are so small, his feet are so mutated, and his arms sit so weirdly against his body.  (Note, the figure's right arm and its position against the right side of the body ALWAYS throws me.)

Anyways, hopefully in a few weeks my figure drawing will be much improved, and I can draw a male figure from scratch without too much embarrassment.  I'm hoping compared to this "BEFORE" drawing, my "AFTER" drawings will make me proud.

For reference: I'm using an ipad2 with a Bamboo pen, using an app called Sketchbook Pro.

Best tutorial I found today for neck drawing!

Steven Sanchez's neck tutorial