Creating A Character Template

1. Do some loose, fun drawings of your character to get to know him/her. Don't worry about "good drawings" here. Focus on the main proportions and lines of action.

 2. In Photoshop, draw matching front and side views. Use guides to help you align the features. I still try to stay as loose as possible at this stage, and gradually tighten up the concept. I ended up putting the side view arm on a separate layer and making it transparent so I could see the full figure. I kept a copy of the opaque arm, so I could see that part clearly in Maya as well.

3. Save out separate front and side view files to use as templates. Make sure they are the same height in pixels.

4. Load them as per the How To Set Up An Image Plane Template post. Make sure you match the front and side cameras with your front and side images.

5. Adjust the "Center" settings in the Image Plane Attributes if you want to move the image planes off of world zero. This way, the image planes won't interfere with your view of the geometry.