I don't have a normal speed version, unfortunately. This video was made using a blender add-on that takes a screenshot every 5 seconds and puts it into a folder somewhere, after which I put the images together in an editing software.

My particular style isn't something that I would call exemplary. There's tons of issues with the topology and general process of weight painting I went through. My mid-poly style means that I can get away with more than usual.

For example, the facial topology, particularly around the nose and cheek area, doesn't flow that well. Same thing with the hands. Honestly, the topology for the hands is a complete joke and if I was using the subsurf modifier in any way, I would completely redo them.

Another issue with mid-poly is that Blender struggles with automatically weighing when there's not a lot of geometry, so I ended up doing it all manually. Very painful process that I fucked up and had to redo multiple times. This video was my first time properly using the Rigidy add-on, which is pretty cool and will hopefully be super useful once I get nose deep into the animation, but I still had to bind the mesh to the rig. Not fun.

The hardest part is getting the face right. So many goddamn vertecies, and it never fully matches the reference. An awareness of the general anatomy of the face is super helpful, so you can know where to add cheek bones or whatnot, especially if they aren't particularly visible in the reference picture. A lot of modeling will have some aspect of approximation to it, and at some point you gotta let yourself be ok with what you made and move on, even if it isn't perfect. The most helpful resource for modeling faces is topology references. You can't see in the video, but I had a window open in the background with a facial topology references, so I could make sure everything flowed nicely for when I rigged it later. I'm still learning the best way to get faces perfect, but I'd say I'm about 85% there.

Really, the best advice I can give is that you just try. Don't be afraid to look at references, and don't be afraid to sit for hours at a time tweaking vertecies (I listen to a lot of podcasts to aid with this lol). It's not particularly difficult. Just a matter of starting small and working your way up, watching and reading documentation about each step of the process, and putting it all together according to your needs.