Advice? ok. First, atart drawing the actual human figure, from real people. I'm not saying you need to find nude models or anything, but draw people who are sitting around at a bus stop or in a park or standing around in a line or something.
Go by Barnes and Noble or Amazon and pick up an anatomy book. Pretty much any anatomy book will do, but if you just want something light that covers the basics of proportion and muscle groups and such, Chris Hart's
Human Anatomy Made Amazingy Easy is a great one, and its small enough to carry around with you when you need to check stuff out (which i do myself, with this very book). Online, check out
www.Bakaneko.com and
www.Howtodrawmanga.com for anime-style anatomy tutorials.
If you're looking for advice on composition, try either Chris Hart's "Manga Mania" or "Anime Mania". Also, for drawing dynamic characters in settings, "How to Draw Anime and Game Characters: Vol.2" is an awesome book, as it focuses entirely on using your characcters to express emotions.
It would also behoove you to pick up a book on perspecive and archetectural drawing, so that your backgrounds actually look like... well... backgrounds.
TO make your characters more "anime", there are a couple keys. First, the IRISES and PUPILS of the eyes should be enlarged signifigantly, though the size of the actual eye socket can vary. For two completely divergent views on how to draw different anime eyes, try
www.megatokyo.com , and note how the size of the eyes change due to gender and emotion. Both of the tutorial sites i linked earier also have subsections on eyes. For the hair, follow the natural contours of hair, only exadggerate the thickness, and clump it into spikes or long strands... sorta. It's tough to explain in words. The best way is to look at pics by different manga and anime artists. If you want to see the two extremes, do a Google Images search for "Chii" and another for "Ryoko". Again, look at the tutorial sites i showed you, to get the general idea, and add your own flair to it.
If you want good examples of "western/anime inspired" work, try
www.machall.com or
www.angelmoxie.com , and then pretty much any comics those sites link you to.
There are some "pointers" for ya, hope they help
