The following is a diagram of how I pencil my characters. Normally I lay down the basics in non photo blue... but that doesn't scan very well, so I'm using red instead. We're using Zoltan again... since he's easy to draw.

First, we lay down the basic shapes for his head, his beak, his chest, and his shoulders. The lines drawn around the sides and middle of the spheres indicate to me where his eyes should be, where the center of everything is, and the basic shape... so he'll look three dimensional when I draw him instead of squarish and boxlike.

From there we start doodling in details. Now you see why I use non photo blue... I use a lot of construction lines. If I don't like the placement of one line, I draw another one; it can all be erased later. This is where those circles come in handy. I use them as my guide for the size of objects, the angle, and the placement of things like eyes, ears, shoulders. My opinion is that construction lines are very important. They help you with proportion and allow you to give your characters a wider range of movement. If you don't use them, your artwork is probably lacking in anatomy or movement... even if you may not notice this fact yourself.

After I know where I want everything to be, I lay down more pencil lines, this time in graphite (pencil lead). That way I have an idea of how everything's going to look when I ink. The pencil lines are all erasable, so if I need to make any changes, I can still easily do so. It's safeguards like this that keep me from having to draw the same picture three times.

From here I lay down the most basic inks, just simple lines, and erase the pencils. That's all you have to do!