3d modeling hasn't reached the point yet where it can match an artist's rendering in quality and detail--remember that the hand-drawn rendering is two dimensional, whereas the "3d model" can be observed in all three dimensions--she can rotate 360-degrees, or you can walk the camera around her in a 360-degree circle, etc. None of which is possible, of course, with a hand-drawn rendering, or, in a game, a 2d sprite representing a person as a flat 2d surface--like the drawing. 3d rendering is getting better, and I daresay it can look much better than what we see in the beta version here, but much of that depends on how the game developers intend for the game to render, etc.
You can do a reasonable job of it: I just mention it as I've been ineptly mucking about with UV mapping again this week, the process by which you wrap the 2D image around a 3D model, kinda like peeling an orange in reverse (U and V being the names of the axes of a 3D image's 2D surface... I think, I wasn't paying attention). Add in some bumps and specularity and the results can be remarkably good.
But yeah, that's rather by-the-by and a piece of actual artwork is likely to look better or at least different as it's a different medium.
