I've been doing this full time for 2 years now,. Take that as you will. There are so many details to leanr about modelling, rigging, joint falloff, uv mapping, textureing, morphing, erc controlls... there's just a LOT to learn. Little dragon would be the best example as a freebie creator.. I don;t know how long Furette took (his first character), but I think Furette 2 took 6-8 months to complete... and then there were updates to her for about 4 months as well. For freebies, you can do whatever you want, material wise.. after all, it's a freebie. And again, you are thinking too hard at the scaling.. just get him to work, use his scale dial, and then just memorize him. NO additional steps needed at all. I think in all poserdom, there are maybe 40 really good people creating unique brand new characters. That's out of thousands of content creators, and thousands upon thousands of users. Not many people can just invest 40 hours a week for the long period of time it takes to learn everything you need to know. Heck, I took a month or two, just to improve my UV mapping skills, and I'm still learning there.

Way too many people take way too many things way too seriously.