thx sueds.
The only advice i can give you is to make the "Joan of Arc" modelling tutorial
http://www.3dtotal.com/ffa/tutorials/max/joanofarc/joanmenu.asp i've learned to model with it.
About the animations, 3DSmax's character studio it's a great tool to animate humanoid characters, there are other programs like Motion Builder or Character Animation Toolkit but i've never tried them myself.
for the facial animations i used a "morph" modifier, i made several copies of the head and modelled a different expression for each, then the expressions can be combined and animated with the morph modifier.
)
great work.