everything can be made faster if you are willing to accept errors, disortions, glitches and low quality.

the rigg for the fingers, the shoulders, the crotch and so on has to be done well or it will look horrible. this takes time or the accaptance of errors and disortions while animating.

motion flow and limited polycount require time or the end results are wrong shapes, hard or impossible animations and texture issues. not even talking about shading or lightning.

i seriously doubt many people are able to finish a character model from scratch to full animated and without massive flaws in very short time.
full professionals worked 2-8 weeks per character for doom3 enemies...for some reason.

i cant talk about figures and numbers i assume or think of or wish they would like to be, but about the hours i need for single steps or models based on examples.

personaly i think that one work day for a full animated, finished character is wishful thinking, but i am more then willing to be proved wrong here.

cheers