Is there any particular method that most people use in doing this
Well i would say theres a method for each person. What kind of rig do you have?
In general this is a too wide question to answer. After all the answer is usually worth a entire university degree. So 3 years of me explaining it all to you. In general the brief outline of the accepted standard approach would be:
preproduction
you write a synopsis
you wirte the screenplay
you draw a storyboard
(you make a animatic out of the storyboard.)
you get approval form the client
earlyproduction
you create the geomettric assets you need
you make a rig
you test it
audio folks do the sound recording
You test your render pipe
You test your characters
you get them approved by the client
you design shaders
you get them approved by your client
you test the render pipe
You notice your render farm time budget dont cut it
you design the shaders again.
Animation (often concurent to the early production)
you block the key poses
you block the in betweens once your satified
you smooth oth the movements
possibly reblock and resmooth the movements after a few trials.
You test the render pipe
Finalizing
You pass over the job to the lighters
you render out the layers of footage
you ship it to comp for color graading and assembly
you ship the fototage to the editor who cuts the shots into one story
you compress the data for your delivery medium
I mean I am all for learning it on my own but I am in a bit of a time crunch
Somehow i dont feel the need to be sympathetic. In either case i hope you have more then 4 weeks fo time to get it done. Because thats quite standard time it takes a experienced user. For you id say 2 months.