The Joan of Arc tutorial by Michel Roger is still one of the best human modeling tutorials around.

http://www.3dtotal.com/ffa/tutorials/max/joanofarc/joanmenu.asp

Mmh, there would be MakeHuman when you don't want to learn i the hard way. A human mesh maker. But the MH Mesh is, like the Poser Mesh, a bit too big for game content. On the other hand, the MH mesh is not this restricted than the Poser mesh ...

http://www.makehuman.org/blog/index.php