Just keep your mesh fairly simple, I uvmapped the basic mesh and then polysmoothed after (being careful not to delete that bit of its history). What I found with shave and cut however is that you need to apply it to a smoothed version. If you apply it to a basic mesh and then smooth it then it ends up with big patches all over
I was trying to do a uvmap like jramauri's but the nose was making things stretch a lot. The compromise was to do it as if you were looking down from the top and then cut it along the bottom edge of the neck (it will be covered in fur anyway so a join line would be fine).
Lol at the bjork and her beasts idea - though I did have to re-read 'beasts' just to make sure....
Thanks jramauri, it seems to put a grid on only when you render the hair (must be as its the demo version). I think I'll have a look at render layers and do the hair separately so that only a little photoshopping is needed to get rid of the grid in the final piece.
Good point about the mouth, I've got a bumpmap set up but it needs some tweaking after the fur is all on
