Hi, Well, its surpassingly pretty quick. From the box, right from the start I go at lest 2 steps subdivisions, then if feels pretty much like a ball of clay. After that just sculpting, grab, etc. I use the scrape tool allot at the higher levels to simulate a more clay feeling. It was around 7 steps high. When making a head from a cube the hardest area
seems to be the ears. Its about 2 hours for me to make a head from a box, other parts might take longer. I think I spent around 6 hours on this artwork.

Well, You can if you keep all your sub/step levels and all the UVs are still intact, this one has 7. So, maybe Step 3 and 7 you can export and use to generate a Normal map.
It would not be the idea way though....
A better way would be to do a retopo of this Hi-Res, transfer attributes of the low-res UV maps onto the hi-res and then generate normal/displacement maps using the Hi-Res information.
I did a step by step here: http://area.autodesk.com/for...s-to-high-res-to-low-res/

Other retopo solutions such as Blender, 3D-Coat, TopoGun, and 3D max plugins.