Process.

Ok, get ready to read, no seriously.
Two years ago I did a little comic called Team Kat-O. It was a fun little learning experience. Here is how I usually approach drawing characters for a book. First I try to do as many sketches as I can in pencil (some of these drawings are on newspapers, tracing paper backs of pizza boxes). Mixing and matching which features look best for the characters. Depending on how much time I have, I would then sculpt the character. If I had a lot of time I would use clay, either Super Sculpy or Paper clay ( I like paper clay because I don't have to bake it, I hate baking when i can't eat it at the end)

These are typical paper clay sculpts, not much detail, but enough for reference. The middle one is just acrylic gesso with a grey tone, the one on the left is partially colored and the monarch is fully colored.

Now if I don't have much time to work on a project, I would skip the clay all together. This is the main villian, 100 percent zbrush. I love using zbrush for these quick character sketches, where as clay can take 3 or 4 hours for something usable, this zbrush model probably took me about 30 minutes. The cat model took about 1 hour tops, maybe less.
Using these models I would refer back to the sketches and pose them accordingly. Photograph the clay, screen cap the zbrush model. And that's pretty much all I need to maintain the continuity of a character.

Noodles!