What's your avatar's name? I've seen you have him for your avatar before but different ones.
Have you ever thought about capturing the essence of the BRS and or barefoot running in character form? If you did, what would it be like? Would you, for us? I would love to see what you come up with. It would be nice to have. I couldn't pay you what you are worth. And I know that's asking a lot, so feel free to say no.
I had a think about your request T.J. and came up with Barefoot Pooch. I certainly wouldn't want payment for anything, or have you feel obliged to use anything I do. I just would rather keep it a hobby that I'm happy to share with the community if that's o.k.
Here's what I've got so far. Ignore the pose, he is positioned that way for technical reasons that will make things easier to manage further down the line.
I've constructed him the traditional 3D way out of polygons, something that is called a base mesh, similar to the way Pixar would create a character. This way give me freedom to pose the character in any position, from running to lifting weights or anything else you can think of, but I'll explain more about that when I get to that stage.
My next job is to cut up the mesh and flatten it out, in essence taking the 3D model and making it 2D so i can easily paint textures for him in a standard paint program that can then be re-projected onto the 3D model.
The tail that looks like someone shoved a broom stick up where the sun don't shine will eventually be bushy and covered with fur, so pay not attention it's all just forward planning for later stages.
I chose a pooch because many of the community members seem to have four legged lodgers, but I made him bipedal, and slightly humanized, there is a word for it that escapes me for now. Three toes and three fingers and a thumb is the standard for cartoon characters like these and not an oversight on my part in case you were wondering. I'll post further progress as I get the time if you're interested.