I don't think this is the kind of question anyone can answer for me, so I guess I'm just looking for some kind of guidance...
I'm trying to create the playable characters in my game (which is a 2D platformer.)
I need this to be a somewhat cartoony and silly aesthetic, so I don't want the characters to have normal human proportions. I need the heads to be bigger to show more detail in the face. The problem is that this isn't what I normally draw, and so now I'm trying to work out of my comfort zone, and I'm struggling to get this right. Especially since I need to be able to animate these characters.
I'm trying to find some good references, but when I try looking for "chibi" the results I get are the ugly-as-hell Super-Deformed characters that look like babies with hookworms. Occasionally I come across some that look like babies, but that still isn't going to work for my game. I can't find any good references that show a range of chibi-deformation, much less one that shows how to properly tweak and deform the body to look right with that proportion.
I've tried drawing some forms, but I'm not getting it right. I wind up with characters that look like children; not child-like in appeal but like actual children. And I experiment a little bit but... nothing looks quite right.
I want something that looks natural. I don't want players to see the game and think that I'm trying to look childish or deformed, but something that just feels... drawn, I suppose. Something that feels natural.
This isn't a matter of simply scaling the body down. I can see that much. I have to tweak things, I suppose girth and length, and not just for the body but for various parts. And since I don't quite know what I need this to look like, I'm really stuck.
I'm working outside of my comfort zone, and I could really use some kind of guidance toward how to find, draw, and model a proper proportion.
(My intent is to look like a drawn image with lines and solid colors; my plan is to make 3D models and animate them, and use special rendering tricks and rotoscoping to produce the game's sprites. So I need this primarily to look right as a drawn character, but also properly exist as a 3D model.)