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 the Sword Master character one check it out the tutorial is a bit outdated ofc but I think it might be what you are looking for though I might be wrong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!!
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 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/
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.