one of the things the developers
'lion head studios'went through was how they created one basic design or mesh for their characters and moprhed the mesh, only making some major changes to the head, they also would re- use a lot of the character animations, only varying the facial expressions to give a different interpretation of the gestures.
basically they found a ways to recycle much of basic structure of the game assets, it was a very impressive explanation of how simplicity always works the best
The moving picture company who also spoke at the 3December explaned their creation of the
Sony Extreme detail commercial for Sony's new HD Camera. they explained most of the filming and compositing process as well as how they overcame some of the challenges.
I cannot stress how it is important that if you ever get the chance to go to one of these events then you should go as you will see how CG is used as a part of the development process and how you as a CGA, CG Artist have to push your skills not only to know how to do something but how to do it in a different way to how anyone has done it before.