How do I fix a drawing that's technically correct but looks wrong?

[JoshRaed]

In this image this table is fine logically speaking. To be able to see the bottom of the pole holding up the table makes no sense from this angle, and to be able to see the guy in the backs feet makes no sense either, he's sitting down and he's not tall enough for that to happen. But in practice it looks like the table is weirdly long, and like the pole is close to the camera, not in the center, and sort of like he's floating.

I don't know what is going on here in terms of how this table looks that I could be doing wrong, but the end result is bad. And it's just a table leg. I even made this drawing with the process of making the leg spreading out from the center of the table. I want to redo this image so it looks right, and I have no idea what could be wrong with it.

[wolflu66]

It seems reasonable to see that pole from this angle. But you could darken the brightness of the pole, it shouldn't be that bright.
I suggest you look for more tutorials about perspective online, which should be quite helpful for you.

"Speaking of the dining table, the tabletop in the image looks too large. (Or we could say the people are too small)
After enlarging the people a bit, it would be reasonable to see the feet of the person in the center from beneath the table.

Let me draw a quick sketch to explain. Sorry I'm in a hurry to go out so I haven't drawn it very elaborately.

Based on the seating arrangement of the five people in your image, if they were sitting, it would approximately look like this:

If according to the situation in the image where they are grabbing for food, then it would look like this:

[jwabeasley]

I agree with @wolflu66, that said there's another bit of framing you can do which is to move the camera up a bit so that you can't see the bottom of the table. Unless purple hair guy's butt is that important. It's not whether it's accurate or inaccurate, it's also just about what looks good and keeps the image from getting too cluttered.

If you're not doing anything with the underside of the table, just keep it out of the picture.

You could also darken that section quite a bit, it's ostensibly all in shadow anyway.

[DokiDokiTsuna]

The previous two replies have already covered a lot of potential fixes and flaws, but there is one glaring issue that I think is at the center of this 'optical illusion' here: Red-Shirt Character's head is way too small.

It makes them look much further away than they should be, which makes the table look bigger than it is, which makes it seem like their feet should be showing underneath due to how far away they seem to be, which makes the center pole of the table that is underneath feel like it's floating nebulously in 1.5-dimensional space. ^^;

It's not the only problem; all those other issues with the perspective and anatomy are still very much issues, but I think it's this mistake in particular that skews the whole drawing and highlights that 'wrong' feeling.

[JoshRaed]

I think I miscalculated headsize, like for some reason I thought it was a third of the shoulder width, when the head is clearly supposed to be half the shoulder width.

[annuskabriar]

I agree with what the others said, and would also like to point out that the arms might be a bit too long 0 on some characters, at least. like the character with dark skin and blue shirt on the far left (our left); their arm is rather long. and the arm of the other dark skinned person with orangey hair thats propping up their head seems rather long to me, too. id also work on the foreshortening of the arms reaching across the table (away and to the viewer; the orange and red shirt people); theres lots of tutorials online for foreshortening

[Lensing]

The table is too big. I would never sit down at a table of that size with my homies
except I´m King Arthur and his 12 knights. The guy on the left is cut off for no reason,
the head of guy in the centre shouldn´t be cut off, no room for speech bubbles

1) rough sketch, throw everything on the canvas that you want to have in the panel without
thinking about perspective

2) arrange the setting using perspective. Ground level, height of the table (measure with a standing
figure), chairs, add a quick sketch of the sitting figurese

All your drawings will be better when you learn some basic perspective. Ground level, horizon line
1 and 2 point perspective is really easy to learn in one day and will be a game changer in the long
run. You can arrange rooms in free apps, there are some which are drag and drop and fun to use