Looks good so far, looking at it quickley the one thing that "pops" out to me is the hand, especially the thumb, it looks out of proportion and a bit akward at the moment, as well as the arm pose muscles.

Once you get the basic shape a Z pass would really bring out the detials!

For the snakes, you could make 2-3 different ones then duplicate then use a lattice deformer to move them into postion (as as long as they are intersecting the main Geo it should be fine (reading the requirements)

Nice going so far, I need to get some ideas beforeI give this one a go.