Game Development - Rareware Inspired Project: Treacle the Skunk

I've started work on a 2D Rareware inspired game, and as a test piece, I've 3D modelled one of the characters I've designed for it called Treacle the Skunk.

I'm not sure what her role in the game will be yet, but at the moment, she's the main characters girlfriend and is either the damsel in distress or owns an item shop.

The original concept.

The model I created, I took some liberties with the concept and changed her design whilst modelling.
This model is MK1, since the leg mesh I created for this model worked horribly when rigged.
I made new legs in MK2.

I threw together a quick shop scene to see if she'd fit in a store setting.
The leg mesh looks even worse here.

The newest version of the model with legs that don't suck.

To give her a 'Donkey Kong Country' style look to her sprites, I reduced the sprite to a very small resolution and used the Posterize tool in Photoshop.
To the left is Candy Kong from Donkey Kong Country (1994) to show how similar the sprites look now the filter is applied.

A test animation; its jerky and doesn't loop well but it's my first attempt, and I think it looks really similar to Donkey Kong County.

Higher resolution.

I'm going to develop more 3D characters and use the same process as Treacle to create a bunch of sprites for my project.