Trouble connecting bones and finding the right orientation for a spine So, I'm trying to rig this little guy:



From my understanding the bones need to point outwards, with the thin end of the bone on the outside of the limb.

So it would make sense to me that there's a "knot" somewhere in the body, that everything kind of branches out from, on one end the head and arms, and on the other end the legs.

But how can I make the two ends of this "knot" connect, the top part of the body and the lower part of the body?

I looked at this question, which helped a bit, and also at this but couldn't find an answer.

When I try to parent then connect the two vertical bones of the spine, one of them disappears, and this happens which deconnects some bones:



I don't want that to happen, I want to be able to parent all the bones together.

If I try to re-connect the shoulder bones to this big spine bone, this happens:



Here's the .blend file:
See this tutorial on rigging: https://cgi.tutsplus.com/tutorials/building-a-basic-low-poly-character-rig-in-blender--cg-16955

There you can learn some of the fundamentals of a biped character rig. Unlike a human body, all the bones of a rigged character may not connect directly. There you will see how to use Make Parent > Keep Offset to connect your bones in a proper armature.

EDIT: I've constructed a basic rig for your little guy based off the article I linked to. I recommend that you rig him yourself for education's sake, however I am providing the Blend file for your reference.

The Blend exchange site isn't working for me right now, so here's a PasteAll link: http://pasteall.org/blend/index.php?id=46291