[need opinions on a thing, please]
I've been looking at this so long, I'm no longer sure if I'm still making progress, or if I'm messing it up.

it's a 3D model that I'm making less anime and more realistic. working on poportions atm, not the texture/shading.

I've been smoothing it out as I go along, and the triangle density/mesh detail is getting pretty high, but is still well within the bounds of what I'm comfortable working with....

What's the original?

uhh... sec, and I'll cap it in the game?

Okay!

also, a bigger shot of my version of the model... my modeling program, MilkShape, goes pretty fish-eyed when something's too close to the camera, hence those shots of it there are so small.

...I'm trying to find a good spot in the game to take a pic of him from, but tbh, it's kinda irrelevant? my question isn't whether I've made him more realistic looking than he was before. it's if this face model itself is all that realistic.

and possibly, what parts should I alter further/focus on more, to correct it, if it isn't.

....yeah, his hair keeps being in his face, in-game.

I'm also pretty certain I want to redo his upper eyelids, so that they can move more realistically/fold up properly when open, for animation/posing/expression reasons....

i think it's pretty realistic

I know it's fairly realistic (it certainly doesn't look like he just stepped out of a Dragonball Z thing, or Sailor Moon or whatever) but like I said, I've been staring at it so long, my brain's starting to do that thing where it just goes, "DON'T ASK ME, why are you asking ME??"

The one critique that jumps to mind here is, "that's a he?"

If the original was sort of a bishounen type anyway that's not a problem, mind you.

yeah, he's wearing makeup. I think he's supposed to be a teenager, at the start of the story....

but the faces don't change, exactly, throughout the game.

(the game's art style is also wildly inconsistent, to the point where it's just laughable, but that's a different issue.)

my goal here is to simply have a realistic base, which I can just alter a bit to make other chars from, male or female.

(I'm laughing, because I tried altering a past version of the original model (the game's changed up its faces' art at least twice now; the first iteration had a much lower polygon count, but more realistic proportions. the second version was hideously fugly, imho. the third version is the one I'm working off of, bringing it back to more-realistic v1

(-proportions first, and then trying to bring it even further in line with realism from there, which is where I am now, going "but is this still correct? I feel like I still need to change things, but what, exactly, and how?")

(er... I tried taking the v1 of this model and making a female version of it, since I object so much to the game's own female faces. and wow, she's a lot prettier than what the game itself offers.... XD)

bumping this - anyone care to take a look, tell me if anything looks too weird?

...going to add a second stripe of triangles down under the chin. I don't think I like how it folds under, on the part that'd connect to the neck....