> MOI has just joined the "can do butt ugly, wrinkly characters" club started by Zbrush. =]

Ha! :) That way you don't have to worry about any ripples and undulations from the loft, they just add more character in that case!

Before subd became mainstream it was a lot more common to do faces using NURBS. I think someone posted Jeremy Birn's tutorial and there are some other ones floating around, like:
http://highend3d.com/maya/tutorials/modeling/nurbs/156.html

One technique that used to be commonly used was a kind of radial layout of cross-sections around the mouth (shown in the above tutorial).

Another method that I see sometimes used is a kind of hybrid NURBS / Polygon approach where different individual pieces are modeled using NURBS tools like a sweep for a top cheekbone, or most of a nose, but you keep all the pieces separated with some space between them and then in the poly modeler add polygons to connect the pieces together.

- Michael