I've made some progress on the player model. Each pic represents a stage of development over a four hour period of work.

http://img174.imageshack.us/img174/8016/player10eo.jpg

http://img504.imageshack.us/img504/7036/player23vv.jpg

http://img281.imageshack.us/img281/4337/player30do.jpg 

I'll work on skinning the critters.

For the player model, I was emulating Sam Fischer of Splinter Cell, but I think the head profile looks more like Kevin Spacey. 

looks like a lot of work. I think it has some proportion issues though. To me it looks like the forearms are too long, the upper arms slightly too long. The chest area looks nice presuming its in some sort of armour. The head looks pretty good, is the neck a bit long though? Also maybe the upper back needs beefing up a bit. There's also something off about the legs, but i'm not much of an expert in this sort of thing.

Maybe you should get one of the awesome artist folk from here to help you out, Bal or someone. I bet they could tell you exactly what to do to make it look more natural. 

Forget the face, it looks better in Post #3039, screenshot #1.

Also, is he making fists or are his thumbs really longer than his fingers?

Some proportion work wouldn't hurt (ever pick up "How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way?") :) 

to be worked up, like the back of the head; I haven't really touched it yet.

I haven't looked at The Marvel Way, but I do have book's on artistic anatomy, including Albinus's work. I've always thought that Marvel is the most consistent in terms of design of the comicbook houses.

My own work got too manneristic from my tat work, but consistant practice ought to take care of that. It was all of those dang Celtic Crosses :)

The hand looks horrible on the right side screen of the first pic, but the left side screen does show its proportion is okay.

The leg problem is the result of having a straight V for the inner thighs. I need to bevel that for the pubis, and then add extrusions on the calf to indicate the adductor group.

Thanks for the comments. I do appreciate them. If there is anything I miss, I do want to know about it.

Necros, I just saw your post. I'll add some wireframes later in the week. 

Nice start Headthump, I'm sure you already know what you're doing, but just in case, a couple things that might make your life easier when you get to animating: More edge loops around each hip, or you won't have enough density to fold that area properly (and give him a crotch =D). It's best to not have the thumb on the same edge loops as the fingers, if you check on a real hand, the thumb is really under the others. 3 or 5 edge loops are best around knees and elbows, depending on your target polycount, same as the hip, even if you don't have much detail to put there, you need the density for proper animation.
Oh and yeah, proportions are a bit strange, his legs look a bit short, have you drawn some sort of model sheet for this? 

I know what you mean about the legs. In certain positions, it looks like he is wearing parachute pants!

The base pic for the model is a Splinter Cell screen shot, and I see how the top down view from it has had a distorting effect on how I see the torso/leg ratio here. In my defense, my favorite painter is El Greco :) 

http://members.home.nl/gimli/Flat1.jpg 

I think he is almost ready to be skinned.

http://img118.imageshack.us/img118/6752/player56kb.jpg

I want to keep him at a low enough polygon level that I can still convert him to a standard mdl format. He is still pretty low on the poly numbers - the vital stats:

File Name: Player
Version: 6
Number of Vertices: 693
Number of Skin Vertices: 1
Number of Faces: 1392
Number of Frames: 1
Average Size of Triangles: 0 

but it looks like you'll need a few more polys around the armpits/shoulders for them to deform well. it looks like the shoulder is directly connected to the upper arm without any polys inbetween... it will deform badly that way. :S same with the waist area and legs. (and one edge for the knees?!) i'd cut down on polys on the face and use them in more important areas at the joints.

just my opinion anyway... (haha, i love this disclaimer! ;) ) 

well, i realise there's the one wireframe on the side there, but it's hard to tell from that. 

If anything, the chances are that the model is too detailed in places for quake to handle it well. My suggestion would be to compile it as it stands into mdl format, and see how well the detail is handled. The reason I'd be concerned is the way quake stores the location of vertices.

Basically, the x y and z coordinates of each vertex are given by a single byte, so there's a 256x256x256 grid for the points to snap to. This grid is scaled to the maximum extents of your model in all it's frames. This is why you get model wobble in quake, the rounding errors caused by this practice, and I worry that the detailed face and hands will suffer in quake format like this. So do a conversion and see how it looks. The advice people are giving about having enough triangles at the joints of the models is also important.

While we're on the subject, a few other thoughts about the accuracy of quake model format. The first is that the accuracy is a global thing, it depends on the extent of your model in all of it's frames. So if you want your model to look it's best, keep everything as central as possible. If the model is moving in a run/death animation, make sure it's kept centered on the origin. If you need to have a skin frame(although hopefully most people don't do this any more), make it smaller than the original model. If there's any way you can avoid an abnormally frame in a model, then the rest of the frames will be that much sharper.

You can also, if you have the time and patience, make multi-segment models, for instance a seperate head and body. Since the head will have it's own, much smaller extent, you can cram that much more detail on. Then again, probably not viable for a monster in-game, since there's no tags or weapon_follow to attach things with. It would be a good way to do some machinima stuff though.

A final tip: If you make a dummy frame in your model with vertices at 256 256 256 and -256 -256 -256 in quake units, your model will snap to the grid used for mapping. This would be handy if you wanted to make map models that fit seamlessly with geometry. 

you can avoid an abnormally frame in a model,
you can avoid an abnormally large frame in a model, 

I was planning to ask for some tips in the Help section on the MDL format. Thanks, Preach.

You are right about the shoulder/upper arm connection and also the knees, Necros. There is still room to slip in polys for deformation purposes, so I'll work on that asap (and also those ugly-ass ears). 

but the proportions seem a tad weird, the arms are almost as big as the legs? I can't pinpoint what could be made to correct it, sorry. :/ 

That was helpful. I kept seeing a problem there too, it is in the size of the arms. They should come down to mid thigh, but these were slightly longer than they should be, and slightly thicker as well.

Here is a corrected version.
http://img405.imageshack.us/img405/1132/playavetruvian23li.jpg

If you take a look at the familiar sketch, Vetruvian Man http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitruvian_Man
which served as a rule of thumb for proportions for centuries and is still useful, I think you'll see my corrections are now matching up.

In a squared area devided into four equal parts, the nipple line comes to the first 1/4 ratio, the symphysis pubis (just above his weiner) is the mid point, and the midline in his knees hits the 3/4 mark. Also, the arms spread out to the ends of the squared area. This is where I made my correction; the fingertips could spread out far past the squared area before I evened them up.

Thanks again, Bambuz 

Good progress, I'm still pretty convinced your proportions are off though, his legs look too short, but I think the problem is actually that his crotch is much to low, making his legs short, and his torso much too big.
Also, your chest topology is friggin weird, what's up with those long triangles on the side, it's gonna look pretty strange when you start animating if he bends over and stuff, most of the time, simpler topology is always better (this is for hipoly stuff, but isn't so far off, but pelvis-lower torso are ok...
http://born-robotic.net/stuff/girl04.jpg it's not done though, plenty of silly errors in other places). 

was too low aswell. Then I realised he probably isn't naked, so hopefully that'll look better skinned? 

where'd you learn to model like that? 

School (yeah, I guess that's cheating =).
Still much to learn though! (Unfortunatly, not much time to put most of the stuff I learn to personal use...) 

It's obvious that you will use a few percents of the stuff you learnt at school (and also what you will learn if you still ahve to go to school..) in the "real" life (I mean life after school...)

In anyway, I really would like to see the model with its skin: I guess it looks awesome :) 

Unless those are underage tits...
�_� 

You so mean. The polycount quadruples when I put my meshsmooth though!
JPL, I know this stuff will come in handy, just meant I wish I had more time to use now on personal projects. 

BTW, are you still at school, and if yes, which school ? 

Well yeah I'm still in school, it's some 3D Animation/Film school in Paris, part time (en contrat d'alternance), have like 1 week of classes a month, rest of the time I'm at work.