Does C4D do displacement painting? It'd be news to me if it does because last I checked, it didn't.  ;P  Modeling a human or creature in C4D would be akin to modeling a human or creature in other apps. The only difference would be the location (and sometimes the name) of certain tools. So if you're familiar enough with C4D you may be able to utilize tutorials intended for other applications.

I'm afraid I don't know of any DVD's that teach modeling characters in C4D. I ran across one that teaches technical modeling for product design but that's about it. Try asking in the Cinema 4D forum here at Renderosity, maybe someone there has heard of something.