Here are my first three attempts at making my own figures: 
These will be passengers for my open-air excursion cars, which are not yet built. The two guys in the background are figures I bought from SLM, and painted myself. I’m not very happy with the paint job on these figures. On the lighter colors I had to put the paint on pretty thick, and some of the paints are too glossy. i was using some artist’s acrylics, some “Apple Barrel” craft acrylics, and “Patio Paint” exterior acrylics – basically whatever I had on hand. The Apple Barrel stuff is very flat, which I like, but I don’t know yet how well it holds up to UV exposure. I have some closeup shots of the individual figures here: http://www.raydunakin.com/Site/IRR-Figures.html#grid And here’s a figure that I’m still working on: 
No head or hands yet, but (hopefully!) when it’s done it will look like me.
Ray, those look great. What are you making them out of?
Ray, Those look really nice!
I smell a HOW TO in GRM. Looks like something EASY & CHEAP I’M in for that.
They’re made from Premo, Sculpey’s top of the line polyclay. It’s applied over an armature made from twisted aluminum foil. I learned a LOT from reading the “figure classes” put together by Chris Walas over on MyLargeScale: http://www.mylargescale.com/Community/Forums/tabid/56/forumid/22/postid/7681/view/topic/Default.aspx His style is a bit more caricature, but the techniques can be applied to any style. I’ve also picked up some tips from Richard K. on LargeScaleCentral, whose figures are very lifelike. That’s a look I’m still trying to achieve.
Two thumbs up from the swamp here Ray, Looking great!
Toad