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Armatures: figures

The easiest way to create armatures for figures (figurines) is to use iron wire.
This way you can roughly follow the skeletal structure of your figure. A human-like figure can be made using a wire for the head and body, a wire for the legs and a wire for the arms. In the case studies I'll show how to create them exactly, for now I'll show the basics and some considerations.

Take a cocktail-stick, take a length of iron wire and loop it around the stick (about three times will do) so it stays in place.
Bend the wire at shoulder height and at elbow height, bend it again at the end of the hand, and go back parallel to the first wire. This will become the left arm. End the arm about halfway down the cocktail-stick, loop it around again and start on the other arm.
The other arm should also end at about halfway down the stick.

Loop it around a few times to go down the stick to work on the legs. Those are done the same way as the arms, bend these at the hips, the knees and the feet, turn back and end the left leg at the end of the cocktail-stick.
Do the other leg in the same manner and finish by looping your last bit of wire round the stick and the 'hips'.

You should now have a wire frame for a biped.

Bend the figure at the elbows, hands and knees to position it in the way you want. You can also bend the figure by (carefully) breaking the cocktail-stick between the wire loops for the arms and the legs.

It's possible to set the figure in a sitting position, running, fighting, etc.