I have been very inspired recently by all the wonderful art that I have seen on this forum. Especially the artwork from the Best of 2023 character category. So much so, that I have decided to design and model a character. I’ve made characters before but never got past the rigging stages. My goal is to model a character, texture and rig him, and hopefully make some cool animations. This is the sketch I put together.
Stay tuned!
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The hair has some nice flow and shapes to it in these sketches.
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Thank you! I feel like thats something i need to work on more but I appreciate the compliment. 
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Tonight’s work! Wanting to make sure im getting all the topology right so I have an easier time rigging later on. I was suprised with how symmetrical my front profile drawing was. Normally i have to choose the side of the reference I like best and model off of that. Lol I ended up ditching the side profile drawing midway though since I dont think i got it right. His facial structure was off in the side profile.
Ears are hard. I’ve always looked at them as “Does it look mostly like an ear?” If yes: “Do I care that much about the topology, since they don’t move much?” The answer is usually not so much. Other than maybe that pinch point at the top of the tragus (more visible in the grey shading) this looks like an ear to me.
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“… I’ve always thought of the testicles as the ears of the genital system. They serve a very important function, but they’re not all that great to look at”
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Topology is very important but my opinion it needs to come after proportion. specially in an early stage
you ears are well modeled in my opinion but they look tiny, ears are usually the same high of the nose.
back of the skull is flat a bit. neck should go forward bit and not vertical
download a real reference of a human skull and lay it down on your model and see if it fits. but noone can tell you exactly how the differences from the perfect references is what makes the character who he is.
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It’s not my quote, it’s from Parks and Recreation 
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Thanks for the valuable feedback. Good advice. I will lay an accurate reference over it and make the needed adjustments. My gut feeling was that they needed to be larger but i was so focused on going off of my reference that i didnt change it.
@joseph Facts 
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My pleasure. and good luck! hope to see more.
this will explain better what i said. (a pic is worth 1000words)
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Here’s an update after those adjustments. Ear size was way off like @cgPixel mentioned. His cranium size in general was just a bit too large and the front of his face was just a little flat. I didnt want to mess around with the front of his face too much though in order to maintain the likeness of my character references, so I simply made the front of his face more curved but didnt try to align anything on the z axis. Overall I think this is a good balance of anatomical accuracy and character attributes.
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Progress report #5
It’s not perfect but it’s a start for the torso, and I’m ready to go to bed. Feedback welcome!
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It’s hard to judge in orthographic view, can we see perspective?
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Question to anyone who can answer: is it a good idea to model my character’s pose to the rig I plan on using or to model the character and then match the rig to that? Trying to think ahead here.
I always model the character, then fit the rig to the character. I find it much easier to move a bone than to adjust the shape of the character to match bones, especially in areas like the fingers.
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I agree that when it comes to convenience it is definitely best to match the rig to the model rather than vice versa. But are there any benefits to do it the other way? Like would it make refining the rig weights easier later on if the character is in the rig’s designated position?