Checkout Tyler Wilson's tutorial. The best tutorial on how to make a brush for painting hair imo. I still use that brush all the time to this day! :) (Bottom of the page) Here: http://www.tylersart.com/thor.html
It's a good start. I would collect as much anatomy reference as you can. Check out http://poopinmymouth.com/tutorial/tutorial.htm There are some really good character modeling tutorials there. I hope this helps.
Just to help you with the tracking, racer445 says something like that in this tutorial: http://cg.tutsplus.com/tutorials/autodesk-3ds-max/project-workflow-creating-a-next-gen-sci-fi-prop-day-1/
You could cut down on the polygons; a base mesh doesn't need to be detailed, leave the detailing for the sculpting app. I wrote a tutorial that covers this process: http://jasongordy.com/pages/tutorial/page1.html
have you seen that tutorial on 3dtotal? the Sword Master character one check it out the tutorial is a bit outdated ofc but I think it might be what you are looking for though I might be wrong
When you read the tutorials you may infact then how to connect polies together and not just stick 2 nurbs objects into each other =] Haha But yeah man, tutorials are the way to go. There are PLENTY!!
i think its coming along nicely, can't wait to see the tutorial on the eyes. I really wanna see the tutorials you have been reading, they have obviously been working for you.
As Paul says Mike, forget Nurbs. SubD is the way. This is a classic tut. It's not how I work personally, but it's a great tutorial that offers up a lot about topology etc. http://www.thehobbitguy.com/tutorials/polymodeling/
At the moment, it's will be for environments, so buildings, rocks, trees etc. Is there any tutorials around that specifically deal with this? I've watched a couple of other tutorials aswell but they didn't really go into depth about creating the 'cage'.
I'll update the tutorial, I think though that 127 and 128 are close enough to not matter *too* much. Also Sinister, I mentioned setting it into an action and even have said action available in the tutorial.