Character Development _ Body Skeleton

The hardest part for me in the skeleton foundation is to figure out length and arrangement of the body parts. Like, for example, on the second picture where the cat is throwing the ball. The leg is up in the air and hand should be behind it, but on the skeleton structure it's not clear (same where he is crossing his hands). When drawing the structure I should always keep in mind WHAT I want to draw, the finished pose, and trying to produce it on a paper with simple lines. It's like ripping it appart and leaving only base lines, the skeleton. Also, the head always looks wrong. Probably because head already have some shape to it... It is hard to connect shape and lines together.
I found that I don't like the skeleton foundation much, thought it is helpful to know it, and probably in some situations it will help me to keep proportions correctly.