Make 4 planes - I often do this with a cylinder - delete the end and 'corner' faces leaving 4 faces remaining - this gives you four one-sided planes.
You need 3 sprites - a front, side, and back
Add your sprites to each plane in the texture menu. Flip the vertexes for one of your side sprites so it's facing the opposite way and your character faces forward.
Move the planes so that they overlap and that opposite sides of your sprite are touching, - since they're single sided you get to see one of each. Intersect the two pairs of planes - the end result should just look like a "+" from above.