Yep, plan out your edge flow in advance if it helps you work.  It's a great way to do it, and a really professional way, for obvious reasons.  Especially for a "hero" character, which will undergo a lot of close ups and such, or need to be animated with lots of subtlety, studio modellers, early on, will have the flow of edges either sketched out or blocked out in advance.  During the design of important main characters, I've seen modellers work very closely with the animators on how they intend to rig the mesh, etc.  This is especially true for VFX, not so much for game characters.

Depending on what method of modelling you are using, the way to get to your desired topology will vary, but when you have a blueprint, you're far more likely to succeed in the end at creating something that works how you want it to.

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Tools :  3dsmax 2015, Daz Studio 4.6, PoserPro 2012, Blender v2.74

System: Pentium QuadCore i7, under Win 8, GeForce GTX 780 / 2GB GPU.