Looking good so far. I might question the sharpness of the cheeks, but I am also not overly familiar with the source material, and it is a more stylized look.

Also, if you are worried about Maya frying your CPU, you can throttle the process so it will only use so much power at a time. It should help with heat issues, and can also help you speed up rendering when you are less worried about that. Also, if you have an Intel processor, it will cut power to itself before it burns out.

Admittedly, I am questioning whether or not to use Maya fur at all because, unlike hair, it does not respond to dynamics and such, but still takes forever to render. It also clips other meshes. So it is not very flexible, anyway....

Are you going to rig and animate it?

Aye the sharp cheeks are a part of the style I've adopted for this project, I'll be shaping them into something like fluffy sprouty bits in mudbox hopefully. It's not just damage to my machine that I'm worried about but also the time it'll take to render which is the main reason I'm sticking with bump maps for fur and things.

I'm working on Alice's rig at the moment, I'll get round to this guy at some point, but rigging isn't exactly my forte so it's taking a little while (mainly coz I'm taking the ignore it and play pokemon approach at the moment)

That is the approach I have with most of my projects right now. |D

I actually got a detailed book about rigging, so hopefully I will have some tips for it soon. It really is the tricky part....

yeah I have a nice book with some tips. A friend on my course gave me some fantastic Digital tutor vids also well. but it's still not the most fun part. it's a toss up between rigging and painting weights as to which I hate the most.