May I throw a rotten tomato at your ivory tower when you are guilty of making such broad generalisations…
“photo-realism” is too broad (and dull in the opinion of some of us)
I’d like to suggest that we go with a
1- B-Movie “Horror” Character (style open to modelers choice)
2- Charicature of a famous person (style open to modelers choice)
Alternately - a different type of challenge -
1- 1000 patch character (build up model design skills)
2- Furry Creature (only open to people using latest version)
The last choice is that though I originally signed up to modeling and animation contests, characters built in latest versions won’t open on older versions of AM.
I just don’t like photo-realism as a style that’s my opinion 
for that kind of thing)