/3/ - 3DCG

I'm primarily a 2D artist and really struggle when it comes to understanding 3D stuff at all, I can animate well in Maya and Sculpt in ZBrush but I don't understand Polygon Modeling, Topology, Rigging, UV Mapping, Textures, Compositing, Rendering.

I was set a task in the next 3 weeks to sculpt a character, texture it/UV Map, retopologise it, rig it and then put it into a real life environment (as in a photo/video). Are there any tutorial series that follow this entire workflow that are good? I can probably try to figure out the last part separately.

How do I optimise my sculpt/model when sculpting if it's going to be animated? Most of the things I've done so far have had a pretty ridiculously high poly count. Decimation Master?

I'm probably going to do one of these monsters of mine (pic related, probably the yellow/orange guy), a more realistic mushroom monster or a golem. Which raises the question of hair, is it better to do it in ZBrush with fibermesh or Maya with ZGen?