Character Rigging and Skinning

Rigging can be used for things like rope, and character rigging with inverse schematics. This will allow the user to create things like arms and legs, or anything with joints that requires movement via a hierarchy.
By going to the 'system' tab on the right, you can select 'bones' from the object type panel.

Under the IK chain assignment panel you can select different IK sovers. The general solver to use for making things like arms and legs is IKlimb.

You can also assign dummy objects to certain bones within arms and legs to make it easier to move them around instead of clicking on something else by mistake.
When you have your bones layed out in the shape of an arm for example, you can then select a box or a cylinder etc and manipulate the shape over the bones. When happy with how it’s layed out, select Skin from the modifier list, and under the parameters you can add the bones you wish to attach to the outer object. When they have been added you can move the bones around and the outer object will move with the bones.
To create my character I placed down the IKlimb bones in the shape of an arm and a body and a leg. The arm and the leg were layed out in similar ways while with the body I turned the side fin option on to create the basic rib cage structure on the body.

I used the cylinder tool and added more height segments which will give you more polygons to manipulate the object. I changed the cylinder into the shapes of the arm, leg and body. I cloned each leg and arm so I could have both which were the same.
The head was another cylinder that I scaled taller slightly and placed a single large alien like eye in the middle of the head.