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tHe ReD ZoNe is dedicated to the skill and art of advanced freeform Imagine modelling. It makes no excuses for it's unitelligibility and rests on the fact that some things are just plain hard to teach!
you can find here all sorts of tips and ideas to help freeform modelling.
use rectangle select all the time, it is good. use rectangle select in the side view to pick points symetrically on both sides of an object and use scale and 'm,Z' and 'm,Y' to move them while maintaining the symmetry.
experiment with moving a set of points WAY too far and then using SMOOTH and Select-MORE to put them back neatly.
if a shape is too hard to model use Mode/Pick Faces, pick faces, fracture Mode/Pick points, SMOOTH on a far simpler model with only afew faces like the Giraffe
Don't bother with bones if you want to animate easily, just make separate objects and group them.
if you can't be bothered to make a difficult bit os anatomy or it won't be see much whip together some blobs and scale them in one direction to lose the 'rotund' look blob objects tend to have.
never miss out on an opportunity to replace modelling by texturing unless you are a glutton for punishment.
if a model looks bad and poorly made look at it from a different angle! some of my models look very poor from several angles so I pick the angle I like.
BUT if an object is for animation always remember to move the preview window around loads to get an idea of the full shape of the object - for complex models like heads it is very easy to make them look good from just one angle but then they look bad in animation.
if you want a head to look good from one angle map a photo onto a plane!
Make half an outline, extrude it, pick the extruded points and mirror them to make the other half of the points and create faces for your outline all at once.
When you join objects hide all the points not along the seam using subgroups techniques and join points using Alt-O Alt-J for each pair of points along the seam.
OR before copying and mirroring position all the points on the seam exactly at (0,y,z) using transformation-SCALE(0,1,1)-and-POSITION-(0,y,z) then mirror exactly around (0,0,0) now the seam's points can be MERGED cutting out all the hassle of the last comment.
learn to draw and sketch. There is no better way to design objects quickly than pencil and paper.
as soon as you sit in front of a computer time spans grow hugely - an arm can take a minute to draw but an hour to model.
don't fiddle with textures and lighting and models for hours and hours - it is better to work these things out well first in your head and then do them quickly.
I spent 8 hours 'tweaking' a picture at work and although it was worth it for the final result it could have been done much quicker if they knew what they wanted.
simplify models down as much as possible - a hand can become easy using an extrude-smooth, four spheres and a cone - look closely at woman III in the platinum gallery!
copy models - a hand can become even easier if it is stolen from Woman III :)
look for primitives - a shoulder guard is s quarter sphere, a hip guard a disc and a sword an edited box.
let your imagination rock and spill out into creation. Become a digital sculptor, painter and director all in one - become a member of 
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