Character model aesthetics

Hi everyone!
Let's try to keep the dev log alive along with sharing some thought process. 

Today I want to reflect a little on ps1 retro aesthetics. There is a lot of ground to cover, so I'll focus on character models first. 

For the ones old enough there is no way to confuse ps1 era graphics, you'll know it when you see it. For the ones younger I think there is a boom nowadays with retro inspired titles that started to march rapidly towards 5th generation and beyond. 

So obvious aspect are low geometry, grainy low-res textures and choppy hand made animations. The rendering worked a little different from what we have today, maybe we cover this in a separate feature. 

The low geometry pushed the decisions towards designing simple characters, so cartoony mascots were common still, think of Crash Bandicoot, Spyro, Gex, all who where born during ps1 era. 

But what about real life depictions? We've got plenty as well. Realistic people were features in a lot of titles such as Metal Gear Solid, Syphon Filter, C-12, Mission Impossible. 

A common approach was to separate the limbs rather then using a single mesh for a character model. This resulted in some clipping which had to be concealed with textures. That's the look I try to emulate as well.