I'm using DAZ Studio. The character morphs, most of the skins, etc. are custom. I get a base character in 3d (I usually start with one that is so uncustomized that it's neither male nor female at first, because building the morphs up from scratch on that one gives more control over the body shape than I'd have working with another artist's conception of the female form), and most of the shapes of clothing items are products I have, like the street scene. Making the products fit the bodies and making the surfaces appropriate requires a fair bit of work. Once I have a character and her outfit (sometimes I have 2-3 versions of one character for the same story...as Danita with her spanx on has a different shape from when they're off, for example), I load them into the scene, then the work of posing them begins. That's about the least fun part; making the new characters is great, looking at the final renders is great, fighting with miniscule movements of shoulders and fingers is less thrilling. I'm not sure how long I'd say it takes. It took about a year with the software to get it to do what I wanted it to, without weird errors that one has to learn to handle as they come along. Regarding character design, I have no idea how long it actually takes, since I "borrow" some of my favorite characters for reuse sometimes, and I rarely do it all in one sitting. There are a lot of things I have to create special since no one is making products with exactly this kind of story in mind.
I'm guessing it takes a long time. But I like setting up the scenes as I write, it helps inspire me about what could happen next, for example Lupita swinging the truck door to knock a wrestler off of Alma.
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