How to extrude faces to look like a cylinder

Question

I am trying to model this character:

And I am having trouble with the legs. As you can see in the following photo for reference, its leg is made up of two parts, the foot and rest of the leg that connects the foot to its body:

The thing is, when I try to extrude the foot to make the second part of the leg, even with the sub division modifier, this part look kind of boxy. Where I would wish for it to look more like a cylinder:

Is there an elegant way to do so? I would wish to use one instead of adding another mesh for that part. But is there a good alternative to that option?

Answer 1

You could begin with this shape, select these vertices:

Inset and round with LoopTools > Circle:

Extrude up:

Move some vertices and edge loops:

That said for this character it looks like the shape looks more like this? Which means you could do it with a series of extrusions: