Generally, art has no formula.That’s what makes discovery and innovation possible.U could discover a lot of stuff doing things the other way from what most people do;That’s why it’s preferable to let u go ur way and do it how u feel.Look at the market today.Stuff with great detail like final fantasy sells it way and others with less like the incredibles do too.The challenge is all about coming up with something that catches the eye and for that I am ready to dive head first into the unknown.
I will give you some pointers on these two, at least how I do them.
To the first one, the best way to start character modeling, and I’m thinking of this in terms of start learning, is to just start. I never really learned to model the way I do from a turorial about how to model a character. I just kind of tried things out until I found my own style. You can read tutorials, but ultimately you wont understand until you practice practice practice. And practicing means making lots of mistakes.
To the second one, this is what I do. I start with the head. I make an outline from references (either photos, or reference drawings I’ve made) in portrait and profile views using vertices. I start with a rough outline, not trying to get every little detail in, but just giving the general shape. I then start extruding faces around the eye and nose area and start forming my model. That’s about the best I can describe it. Someday I’ll make a video of how I model, but the problem is, I take so much time to stop and think, the video would be very long and boring. Anyway, I hope this might help a little.
I’m no expert but for character modelling I would recommend developing the character with pencil drawings then scanning a front and profile view, clean them up in photoshop or gimp (make each image the same size and make sure major features align in each view). Then you can use the Torq “better face tutorial” method for developing them in Blender.
Alternatively, it isn’t difficult to start with a basic cube mesh, subdivide it a couple of times, cut it in half, mirror it then start manipulating the shape. Delete a face to make the start of an eye hole and delete a face on the centre line to start modelling the mouth. This method relies more on intuition than the first method but may deliver suprising results - and you’re starting with quads all over.
There are certainly other methods. @ndy did a video demo at the recent conference. You’ll find the video on the blender website. He started with an eye and built the character from there. He used a reference sketch but didn’t trace in Blender.