Dragons - Humans with elongated faces.

No...really...Most dragon designs are based off of human facial anatomy, the obvious difference is elongating the front like an american werewolf, adding pointy ears, and then giving the transformed human a lobotomy (there's that wolf thing again, lobo-tomy) by cutting off the top of his head and voila! Instant dragon! Of course, it's always better to use proper reference like reptiles and dinos to base your dragons off of, but if you want your audience (who happen to be human..well, most anyway..) to CONNECT with your dragon, you'de better be sure there's a human underneath that scaley exterior! Don't believe me? Look at Draco from dragonheart! I drew a quick example for a fellow student.