In the concept, the skeleton’s legs are strongly bent in the knees. If you model it right in T pose, you can get serious problems later, when they get bent. That’s why I begin with trying on armor in the required pose.

P.S. If I don’t have a basic model, I can use parts of my old characters or just dummy meshes. If the model is very unique, I can draft a basic mesh for it in ZBrush.

After all the checks, we move to adding the rest of the mesh.