i dont know if i would read so much into the "expressiveness" of portraits, since they are still images.
On that note.
Having Warcraft 3 / Starcraft style animated Portraits, now thatd be awsome.
Of course i cant do custom ones then, but i realy like dthat feature in WIzardry 8, especialy since that game didnt even have character models, it realy let them come alive