Capt.Terror;
Quoting the wiki; October 2005, Alias was sold to Autodesk, and on January 10, 2006, Autodesk completed the acquisition and Alias Maya is now known as Autodesk Maya.
Ashephard;
By no way am I a professional yet, theres some other work out there that would put me to shame :P.. anyways, the model took me about 5 and a half hours.. not really sure though, probably alot less, I worked on it on and off from sunday to yesturday. probably going to add two flame throwers to him.. not sure though.
Urby;
Yea, totally agree with you, and depending on the platform, alot of the time the lowpoly character will be really small on the screen (psp, iphone)
which makes it look even better. And yeah, the texturing is what really makes it.