The VG Resource

*facepalm* Had no clue I could crt+ to enlarge size. Thought that only worked with text.

even still, you should always make his body in its entirety before trying to clean stuff. Not only to fix proportions, but also to draw a convincing pose. next time add his legs.

tip: his arms are arched in your sprire, and it looks weird. If you take human anatomy into account, youll see that limbs are made up of two fixed equally sized "sticks" (arm-forearm, thigh-calf) joined by a joint (elbow, knee). Even if you can do several poses with legs and arms, theyll always be limited to those sticks´ size. keep that in mind.

Okay, I don't want to be that guy, but what do you mean by anchored? I'm still iffy about the arms anyway, I'm probably gonna get rid of them. Or at least give him a more neutral pose. This feels too stiff and awkward, I want him to feel relaxed and carefree, since it suits his char. I think I want to turn this into an animation eventually, so any tips you can give are great.

Alright, added new arms, tried to fix legs and feet. Can't get the left hand to work like the big one though.

I think I finally figured out how to draw a knee; never could get it to come out bent before, even though it looks wrong with the rest of the sprite. I just could never get it using a single line. Really just trying things out as I scribbled with the pencil and this happened. I dunno...I just can't get it to bend properly and look natural, same with the elbows I feel I've made a bit of progress though.

Blerg, did a new char just for the heck of it.

I don't think your approach is the best. You just try to doodle the character within those uneven grid cells there; you're not paying enough attention to anatomy, let alone line quality.
For one, if you mostly want to doodle or draw, I'd suggest to drop the "sprite" aspect and tiny size, work on a somewhat bigger canvas. That should make it easier for you, especially if your main goal is to get a better understanding of joints and poses and all that.
Moreover, you probably should start with a skeleton of the pose you want to achieve; joint circles, limb lines etc. Afterwards, you flesh it out and add clothes. That way, you should get a better result that looks less... wonky. For the new one, the left lower arm bends way too much - it should be straight, as it has straight bones. The shoulders are really uneven, arms too long, etc. Look up some guides on anatomy and proportions (I can't link to anything since I never really dealt with it myself, sorry). Sketch out the pose as a rough skeleton first to get joint positions and lib sizes right.

I feel dumb; that's what I have been doing but it seems to not get me anywhere. I seem to get better results just scribbling than using the bases I construct; though they do help me start it off. I've never been good at drawing this whole 3/4ths angle thing either. I was thinking of trying to do a top down sprite for a change of pace but I have no idea how it would be achieved. Even with refs like Link to the Past or Pokemon trainer sprites, I just can't seem to get it down. and I think I could if I tried hard enough, and got good refs. I don't see what I'm doing wrong here, even though you guys have explained it to me numerous times. I feel like I'm bashing my head against a brick wall, trying to listen to the onlookers who yell at me to stop but I just keep doing it because it's instinct or something.

Previous pretty much nailed it. Your sprites look more like drawings than sprites (and after copying and pasting, they pretty much are). They look more like step one following this tutorial (under the Totally Original Section). Maybe if you have a good tutorial you can see what others are trying to say.

Exactly. I want to get the drawings right before I start coloring and doing shading and all that fancy stuff. I figure that if I don't have the drawing right, the sprite will obviously turn out like shit. Another thing; the small boxes was to give me some...practice on drawing small things in confined spaces.