A lot of times beginners try creating a character right off the bat in Blender, without doing any pre-planning. Here’s a video tutorial (in 3 parts) that goes into the pre-planning stage, such as thumbnail sketching, pencilling, inking, and coloring in Photoshop (or GIMP). The speaker is very clear and easy to understand, and the encoding quality is excellent.
The only caveat is that to download the videos, you have to register at simplymaya.com, but it’s free and painless.
I think the tutorials could be helpful to those interested in putting ideas down in 2D form before delving into the 3D modeling phase.
The tutorial:
http://www.simplymaya.com/movie_pages/tutorial.mhtml?tut_id=143
His technique for coloring is somewhat similar to mine:
http://www.eyephoriadesign.com/fullsizemedia/inkingtutorial/index.htm
Enjoy!