Advice: coming up with poses

http://i.imgur.com/cGImNwq.png

1. Decide what the focus of your poses going to be:
-by this I mean, do you want people to notice the body first? Maybe the head? Or are they holding something important? This way you can choose oppose that helps highlight the feature you want to express more

2. Shift the weight:
-something as simple as sloping the shoulders, or shifting the weight onto one leg, can create a more dynamic pose. An easy way to remember this is to make sure that one half of the body is doing the opposite of the other half of the body. This is not always true depending on the pose or going for, but it's a general way to help

3. Is the pose static? Or dynamic?
-Decide if it's going to be a pinup pose or if it's going to be an action pose

4. Get my good side:
-sort of like one, taking into consideration a character's best features can help you decide how to pose them. For example if a character only has stripes on the right side then it would be a little boring to pose them on the side that has no stripes.

5. Draw from the action out:
-I guess you could call this an advanced technique. Or at least my personal technique.
As a lot of people are taught to draw from the head down as they begin, I have always drawn from the legs up. The reason for this being it never quite made sense to draw from the head down. When you pose for a picture one of the first things that you do is get into a stance because that then sets the tone for the rest of your pose. So then wouldn't it make sense to draw from the legs out in this way your pose has a more fluid feel. If you try to pose from the head down you would probably have a very stiff pose at the end of your picture being taken. I also find it extremely difficult to get my proportions right when I draw from the head down. It usually ends up with me having a head that is either too small or too big.
After I got the hang of drawing from the legs out I started practicing other ways of drawing. If I know that the character is going to be holding a staff I will actually start with the hand and the staff and then draw my way into the body. Something that is almost always consistent in the way that I start my work is the fact that I draw the head the very last. (Unless of course it's something like a portrait).

Disclaimer: as usual remember to take everything that I say with a grain of salt. I am not an expert and I'm not saying that these are the only ways I am simply offering what has worked for me as advice. It is entirely up to you what you choose to take or not to take out of this.

I hope this was able to help you in some way.