@ZacD - Thanks for linking that thread. Good stuff. I still stand by sculpting (or more specifically, modeling in Maya > GoZ > sculpting out the final details that may be too time consuming); however, ZacD and imperator_dk bring up good points.
@ZacD yes, I skimmed through this thread in the past (being envious of Snefer's excellent skills) and wondered how he did these shapes. He uses modo too so I'm quite curious about how he did it. Modo doesn't have FFD and spline modelling there sucks so workflows will be quite different from what I saw in 3d MAX.