Creating organic meshes with metanurbs can be easy, but some meshes can be more than a headache! also with nurbs, but here i will show some tricks that make more easy the use of NURBS.
Let's start this tutorial now...
Sometime ago,just this january i have a work that needs lots of 3d modeling, one of it is the next image shown below.
so what do i have to do?, traditional modeling can't do this in just a few hours, nurbs is the solution!.. but how do i start?, the first problem in lightwave is that you can ONLY use squares to use nurbs, so the trick here is to know how many segments you will need,this isn't hard to know if you inspect carefully your real object,for this object i used the 
command and 8 segments in X and 3 in Y, but why i choose this number, check the pictures first.
Just as we see the left image is what i got in LW, and the right image is what i think about it, the box isn't big enought for the legs, but why?, i choose 3 segments in Y because i will use them for the legs,for this we have to use a new tool, "Smooth Shift", we have to select the outer bottom segments and use smooth shift like the next images.
As you see i used more than one time the smooth shift command,the more you use it,the more detailed the final mesh,but more difficult and slow the metanurbs. Well we have the legs now,now we need the arms and head!,again we use the smooth shift by selecting some faces from the sides just like the picture and use smooth shift again.
The left image is the normal mesh, the right one is the nurbs model.
What now?, just move some vertices around, them must match the background image and also add a volume for the mesh form the side view, so the shadows and specular match the mesh.
The next images will show the final mesh without metanurbs, in open gl,and with metanurbs.
*** When you need more parts just use smooth shift.
*** When you need more detail try julienne, but remember that sometimes julienne can't divide your mesh,and if it do the mesh will loss it smooth (looks like a box with round corners instead a ball for example.)
This is the final mesh,with planar mapping.
