EP

this is the way the industry works

the industry works

the industry works

this is the way the industry works

so i read in me booooook

Modeling the face got er...boring...so i decided to take a break and plan my rig using EP curves so that i can simply snap the joints into place and hopefully *fingers crossed* have correct joint orientation so that the joints will rotate correctly. 

Bring forth the screen prints:

create > EP curve option box...set to 1 linear

chose appropriate view for creating your curve, position in place...right click change verts where required. Only add verts for where you will snap your joints, this will hopefully speed up the rigging and aid joint orientation. Curves are labelled appropriately as is industry practice. 

Here you can see I have created a leg curve and my reverse foot control curve ready for rigging...not sure if you need both but hey.

Make sure your curves fall correctly into position in all view points...check to make sure...don't want to be snapping a rig half way across the grid now! Fingers can be copied, pasted, adjusted in size accordingly. Re-name to pinky, ring, mid, pointer, thumb curves. Its good practice to be naming all elements of your scene and helps you for naming your joints later on. You don't need to create full chains ready for rigging (space between wrist and fingers) as its simple enough to create the joints in between. Marking out correctly now will save a lot of time later on. 
The spine is up to you how many joints/breaks you wish to have...its of course down to the character and what you want them to do. Whether your going to have a spline or FKs for controlling your character.