Whatever you decide - make it human.

What I mean is...

* I've seen way too many poses that lack even the most basic of body expressions, or expressions that are so damned exaggerated, it hurts just looking at it. keep the joints within tolerable limits. If it hurts you to hold that same pose in real life for more than 10 seconds, guess what? It's likely too exaggerated.

• figure out what the figure is doing/thinking/emoting BEFORE you build a pose for it, and keep to that until you're done.

* Use the whole body - every joint. Start at the hip and work your way out. You have a boatload of opportunities to express something with each joint - use them. Figure out what those muscles are doing at the time.

* Keep gravity in mind.

* For the love of all that is holy, only arch the feet down when you have to - not everyone wears 8" high-heel shoes all day long.

* spend time on the hands and fingers.

* take the time to point the head somewhere, but use the neck to do most of the pointing.

* let the figure slouch once in awhile. In real life, bad posture is unhealthy, but in poses, it's pretty realistic (mostly because people slouch nearly all the time in real life...)

* the hip has rotate axes - use them, even when it doesn't make sense to (because humans do exactly that, all the time). Same with the abdomen and chest (e.g. spine).

• not every woman has huge silicone-heavy tits - try to account for variations.