Advice on Early 90's "Virtua Fighter/Tekken" style model

ZombiePlasticClock

Hello Polycount! Still somewhat new to this site. Made an account about six years ago when I was first starting out in 3D, then became a lot more active on Facepunch's TF2 thread where a lot of my skills grew.

Nowadays I'm working on a 3D fighting game in Unity, hoping to recreate that early 90's 3D feel. Like the title says, gameplay, visuals, and audio will feel similar to Tekken, Virtua Fighter, and Street Fighter EX.

Right now I'm working on character models. And while I'm still working on actual character designs, I decided to remake M.U.G.E.N's "Kung Fu Man" for practice:


While I'm happy with the polygonal model with segmented limbs, I feel like it's missing something (No, it's not just the face/texture, gonna wait until Tablet comes in instead of struggling to draw details with a mouse). Tried looking up hardware limitations of 90's Arcade boards and the PS1, mostly found things regarding texture sizes and the like, nothing really useful model-wise.

So I thought I'd ask on here, see if there's something I can do to make it feel more "authentic", something that looks like a game from twenty years ago.

Brian "Panda" Choi

Your sense of good, interesting silhouettes is lacking.  I would THINK even with the older art assets, and veterans correct me if I am wrong, they're still focusing on making interesting silhouettes, easy reads etc.  

Right now your character model is reading just tubular and flat.  There's no interesting contrasts, asymmetry, etc.  The shoulders are as wide as the hips.  The head is just this simple wedge shape; you made no allowance for the jaw bone.

Play with the forms.  Actually have the silhouette say something instead of generic man #5.

ZombiePlasticClock

Brian "Panda" Choi said:

Your sense of good, interesting silhouettes is lacking.  I would THINK even with the older art assets, and veterans correct me if I am wrong, they're still focusing on making interesting silhouettes, easy reads etc.  

Right now your character model is reading just tubular and flat.  There's no interesting contrasts, asymmetry, etc.  The shoulders are as wide as the hips.  The head is just this simple wedge shape; you made no allowance for the jaw bone.

Play with the forms.  Actually have the silhouette say something instead of generic man #5.

Good advice, thank you. In the case of the picture, the character is from Mugen, and by design is the generic tutorial character. Like I said, it was practicing the style before I move on to any serious assets for the game.

That said, you made a lot of good points on silhouettes and interesting designs. The good thing about the model is, while it was for practice and I'm pleased with it, I did notice a lot of mistakes made while working on it that would make rigging fairly annoying. Proportions need work, as well as a lot of the shapes in general.