HOW TO character art???

[SolMorningstar]

I have been searching and searching for information on character art/ a template to follow and all I can find are guides on the text edit side of things, which I already have a general knowledge of. What I'm wanting to do is create my own custom art for the characters I have in mind, but  I

A. Can't find any information on how many separate pieces I need.

B. How those pieces string together (Example: if I have 12 face images, how do I make sure they animate at the right time, like sad when hungry kind of thing.) especially if I want to have more or less custom animations than X character.

C. I can't even find a basic explanation of a template, like for instance the wolf girl "esctemplate" I can open and edit her image files, but how much of that space can I actually take up? and again how would I know that the right animation will play at the right time. 

Obviously this information is out there somewhere based on how many hundreds of characters, especially excessively customized ones exist in the workshop, but no matter where I look I can NOT seem to find it. PLEEEAAASSEEE HELP!!! :L ; _;