In the last months I've modeled these for the first online comunity developed video game:
Acclaim Project Topsecret topsecret.acclaim.com/

After they provided me the awesome conceptual drawings I've gave them the 3 dimensionality modeling with Blender and texturing with

Blender blender.org
Gimp gimp.org
and
Inkscape inkscape.org

The mount (dog with armor) has arround 4500 polys (triangles) and it's textured with a single 1024*1024 image painted in Gimp, the eyes were made in Inkscape.

The Nibi has close to 2500 polys.
His body also uses one 1024*1024 image;
The black and white cloths are my design and have 3 textures [shoes (512*512), trunks(512*512), jacket (1024*1024)];
The green cloths are the oficial design they gave me and have 2 textures [hood(512*512) and suit (1024*1024)]
All of them made only with Inkscape and Gimp.

In the renderings there's only one lamp to project the shadows in the ground. The models are shadless, everything you see is painted.
This video was edited with Blender.