jramauri - thanks I just stuck with the concept drawings and they kind of stayed cute when modelling. I bet if you tried modelling a mario or sonic or similar they would turn out real cute, you've definately got the skill.

papalatistudios - cheers and thanks for the suggestion . At the moment I actually prefer keeping them all hard until the model is nearly finished and then softening it out and tweaking it a bit. The samurai dude is softened (not the sword) but a couple of edges wont play ball and are staying set hard He's also not joined down the middle yet so that might be showing hard edges up).

Joopson - thanks Its just box modelling on the head (turned about 45 degrees'ish) and an extruded six-sided cylinder for the body. It would be a great goal to do tutuorials for people but I think I need more experience first (especially UV's). If this gets finished early then I might consider something basic though

Update: I've been transferring the UV's to a single texture map for the samurai, some of the detail has gone but sharpening the contrast might help distract from that.
Do people create high res maps and then reduce them later???