Thanks Pior. Yeah I have been examining their wireframes which is what first sparked my interested. I was impressed that they were able to create such vivid scenes with such limited polygons and stuff. I guess I just need to get back to modeling then!
Yeah, what I mean by using subdivision was to simply add it as a modifier on top of a regular polygon model, as was done on the Totoro model you pointed out. My advice would be to not use anything like Dyntopo at the moment, since this will require you to rebuild/resurface the model later, which is what you want to avoid.…