I was looking at the screenshots of the old Planeshift 2d game, on the inventory screen it has a picture of the players character, the same artwork as the pics of races in the manual. Personally I prefer having the old artwork on the inventory menu of planeshift 3d than a 3d graphic image, reason for my preferance is that the original artwork adds to the roleplaying atmosphere.
So bottom line is: I think it would be better if the character artwork is implemented into the inventory screen