I do do this from time to time - more mech/car stuff, but the last character rigging gig I had was doing puppets of Take That for the last show. I would always talk to Bret Bays - he wrote the Character object system for MAXON and he himself is excellent, and his scripts for weight painting are essential. He's on Twitter and probably here too, and he will know god-level people for rigging. I can recommend excellent Maya rigger/animators and tbh I would STRONGLY recommend you go down that path and do all your surfacing and rendering with Alembics into Cinema 4D.