There's two significant things to do that I'll keep re-doing for the rest of the project:

1. Shader / Lighting
2. Modeling

Most people jump into #2 too early - and that's usually where they stay, covered in #2. I'm going to use my setup to place reference locators that are parented to the blob model - and translate out at different points. Then I can open the referenced file (character) in a pose that's easier to model in and build a rough skin. When I come back to my scene - the geometry is already in the right place.

With a rough skin geometry, I can light / shade / render until I'm getting the look I want - and it's fast, because the geometry is simple. Speed is an issue when using your own (less than state-of-the-art hardware) and the more iterations you get with the 'final process' the better your results will be.

The last part for me is to replace the early geometry with the high-resolution geometry. Then the final tweaking is still done, but MANY less iterations = faster.

Okay - starting with an inital light postion, we render a frame in the test resolution (0.25) with the final renderer, Mental Ray (to make sure all setups are holding):

The good part here is everything looks as expected, so we keep moving forward...

Note: Stay tuned as this gets updated