This is the orginial model, brought into Modo without the nose. 
The eyes and Nose were NURBS objects, when converted into polygons, the total model weighs 10500+ polys.

The polylimit for this character is 2000 Vertices. Requiring an 80% reduction.

- Toes and Fingers were removed to simplify hands, feet. 

- The seperate Eye, Nose Teeth and Ear objects were combined to create 1 continuous mesh.

- The mesh was then completely re-topologised, with a ratio of roughly 1:4

- Pupils defined by a texture instead of geometery

The resulting mesh weighs 1456 Polygons (1455 Vertices) 

A Bipedal skeleton for the Beaver. 28 Bones in total, with 1 Tail pivot bone and 3 tail bones for bend/twisting.

Also Shoulder bones for more precise arm gestures and a jaw bone to open and close the mouth

 

With a single continuous mesh, with no holes, a heat bind is possible, which takes into account the topology of the mesh and the relative positions of the joints, with little hand editing required.

With the bind complete, we can finally pose our guy.

And the finished game-ready asset. 1456 Polygons, 28 Bones  2 Materials and 1 Diffuse texture