Why hello there my newzealish friend (england, english... new zealand, new zealish?)

I have indeed seen all sorts of places and things 3D printerly...
you might recall that Shapeways custom 'burning anakin' figure from a whiles back? i happen to have a couple around here someplace... in frosted ultra detail it looks EXCELLENT!
there are also on Makerbot's online community several files for SW-ish figures, such as oversized jawas etc... over on HCRealms there are also some custom clix figures etc...

EDIT: some links and visuals
http://www.123dapp.com/obj-Catch/Jabba-the-Hutt/1462287
http://www.bloomilk.com/forums/default.aspx?g=posts&t=9378
http://www.shapeways.com/model/245585/burning-cyborg-with-1-quot-base.html?gid=sg71173

this is where our rapid-prototype repstrap machine discussion turns technical - what resolution and finish are you looking to achieve?
are you looking at cost as a factor?
basically, hot-glue extruder vs resin scintilated lazer stuff... thats this gen, next gen will be 6-axis printing with multi-extruders, and in-home 'etchasketch' smart sand based vaccuum molding.

have you visited alibaba, 3dHubs.com, Maker-Fair/Maker-Convention or your local tertiary institutions rapid-prototyping open day? those are really great ways to get hands-on looks into the field, before you conclude your research and take the plunge into a rapidly shifting landscape
Stereo-scanning is getting pretty awesome, though in some cases it can be quicker to do a mesh projection from 3 isometric views old-school style.

Lazer scintilated and resin rapid prototype machines are more expensive, but produce stronger figures/components, slower, but with MUCH greater detail (approaching that of shapeways frosted ultra detail)
Extruder printers can have a significantly lower quality, with a 'stepped' edge for curved surfaces etc... the detail can be hard to print below ~2mm thickness, though this will depend on your setup and the hot-end size (0.1mm and super slow print speed produces quite high quality figures).

okay, preamble aside,
you can find some pepakura files for pre-printing etc,
and many .skp files from people who use sketchup.
I personally use slic3r, blender, ZBrush and prodesktop to get things print-ready.
You can get a lot of cool stuff for free from DutchMogul, though for droids many of the shapes are simple and can be made quickly in ProD or Blender etc (or MilkShape, yada yada).
Zbrush 40K polycount models are the present envelope for where we're working at in relation to rapid prototype - with in-home/office machines, we're working at the margins of what is possible. Some shapes are hard to make, such as conic-segments and hollow spheres/domes.

Somebody kindly made a Jabba-the-hutt figure and Rancor figure on makerbot, and both are non-manifold but are in our 1/48th scale...
I had difficulty printing a Hutt, because the figure was made only in ZBrush and was not manifold, which made the plate and Z axis 'spaz out' during layer 7 of printing... the same happened with a local friend with an Afina and a liteMakerbot.

There are some easier assets available from Russian and Deutsch webdomains.
those assets are typically in .stl or .skp or .obj.
ocasionally you'll get assets that are like .tga or other projection formats, and those can cause nightmare when printing as things aren't manifold or the vertices aren't aligned and polarised.
my advice at present with polycounts on models? Don't exceed 100K poly for your figure, it will lead to weird stuff in slic3r stage and inconsistent prints (or print times measured in days and weeks).

So, with my k8200 rig,
I can print 15mm x 15mm x 15mm objects and larger quite well and reliably, but smaller than that, and there might be a few misprints and less detail. I am also struggling with conic segments, or Spheres... though I did get pyramids to print all points and edges properly!
I'm running often a 3mm hotend, or 1.75, or 0.3mm hotend. 0.3 is tricky and is used for say ABS psuedoLEGO components.
Its hard to print say a R2 unit, with the same or better detail than the WotC R2 units... using an extruder. No local 3D printer has been able to print it either using an extruder, because its 13mm x 8mm by 21mm, and a lot of curvy shapes, which lead to distortions

With a Form +1 though, or in-home resin printer/lazer printer,
you can easily print small components to 0.1mm thicknesses.

I hope this helps bounce some ideas and opens up avenues of further research and inquiry,
and I'd be keen to hear more about people's experience with different types of steroscanners and how to achieve higher fidelity with extruder 3D printers

That's pretty cool. Lots of options except not very many poses relative to everything else. Noticeably missing: laser-swords.

I didn't get far enough to see the prices. I assumed expensive.

I actually backed the Kickstarter for Heroforge. I ended up with 6 high detail minis from the pledge I made. I designed 4 of my 6 and just actually received them yesterday. At first glance, the quality is pretty good if you go with the high detail but then again I still need to paint them so I don't know if there might be minor printer texture that may come through. Had I not backed the kickstarter, I would have an issue buying them now because I'm not entirely happy with the Sci-Fi selection and $25.00 per mini is quite expensive. Another issue I have is that as you adjust the height of the designs you have no way to gauge the actual height of the final miniature. I was concerned that the scale might come out short vs the SWM so I did most of the heights to or close to the maximums which I wouldn't have done, at least on my female pieces, had there been some form of ruler to guide against.