The human creatures are called ‘Scale figures’ and are there to give you a sense of the size of what you are drawing in perspective of the human scale. They represent team members of SketchUp. It is said that once you are selected to act in a template, you reach an infinite state of mind or ‘walhalla’, mostly due to the number of activations.
Some team members can feel it when you ‘erase’ the figure, which is why they are components. Components reside in the component-tray until purged and there, you can also set the properties of already made components.(right click on a component in the tray)
Allthough the Scale figures are 2D objects, you can make 3D components set to ‘Face me’ components as well.