I remember Otherworld's paper doll system was a lot like that. I'm not really versed in that sort of coding and art design, but I get the feeling that can be very hit or miss for one thing. If the art's bad, it won't matter if the behind the scenes coding does well. Everything behind the scenes has to work, and it will only be as good as the weakest element. It's also something that must either be done by people in at least two that I'm aware of -- possibly more -- fields of expertise or one person with multiple disciplines. There have been active attempts in the past even before TiTS was a thought in anyone's mind to create a character view, even to the point that there was talk of Fen being willing to integrate it into the actual game if it worked well and looked half-way decent. I still even have an old test version.