Character drawing

[handrawn]

I usually start with stick figures - there is a video here as a demonstration of flipbook [an animators tool] that you may like to watch:

http://www.flipbookpro.com/movies/ma...demoSTRMED.mov

the point is that all drawings start out rough whether for animation or not.

And even for a static drawing, to get the dynamics of the pose right you need to work out the line[s] of action so as to pose the body correctly

You do not need to use flipbook of course, I have roughed out this sort of thing in xtreme using the layers both for animation and for static drawings

For animation each layer is a frame - but for static you do need to worry about this and you can simply do several roughs, each on separate layers, each one more detailed, and building the image up, with the final drawing on the top layer...

then when you get better you can start using more than one layer per rough/final [ that's when layer grouping would become really useful....]