Pick a character... any character!...

... and learn to draw him/her/it until you can do it with your eyes closed.  I'm nowhere close to that with Hokey Wolf but I'm leaning.

Here's the HB (now Cartoon Network) model sheet:

The other night I had some fun with it drawing different poses and whatnot:

Then I analyzed a little bit and derived my "ratios":

Hokey is classic HB at 4 heads high.  Slightly less than 1 head width.  His big feet are approximately .75 head.

His legs are short, about .75 head.  It's easy to make his legs too long... but then he doesn't look like Hokey.  One thing I find myself doing is erasing and making his legs shorter.

Pay special attention to his snout.  From a side view a horizontal center line would run just behind the eye.  It's equa-distant from that centerpoint to either the back of the head or the tip of the snout.

I don't know what to say about that hat... it occasionally changes sizes.  Eyeball it to make sure it isn't too big or too small.  Remember: the hat imparts no utility except to emphasize his coolness, his savior-fair, his Machiavelli-ism.  Hokey is a slippery character.

Just now I used my ratios to draw this pose from the model sheet:

I think that's starting to look more like Hokey.  Ratios are a wonderful thing, no?

And again...

Even though I tried sticking to the ratios, in my opinion the legs came out a little too long.

And like so...

It would be easy to draw him lopsided and out-of-proportion and say, "Hey, that's just my style.  Don't fence me in!"  But in young and aspiring animators the studios would look for people who can draw to spec, or "on-model."  They don't need 20 different interpretations; they need the bulk of the drawings to represent a specific character.

Well, I can't draw him with my eyes closed but I know more about Hokey now than I did 2 nights ago.  Onward.