Animation of a human?
You nedd to have a decent animatable mesh, i.e enough geo in areas that are going to deform, elbows, knees etc etc. as you said your best off keeping it to quads. you then need to make a skeleton and then bind the sleleton to the mesh and paint weights.
its a long process that your best off getting a book or a training DVD for to be honest.
"No pressure, no diamonds" Thomas Carlyle