Goblin and Dragon
I decided to combine two recent projects into one final image. They're mostly done. I just need to spend some some time finishing up the Goblin's texture (detail, shading, contrast, dirt), and I'm going to completely redo the texture of the dragon. I'm thinking of making the dragon light orange colored. The Goblin will be holding onto a chain shackled to the dragon's neck. The Goblin is 2700 tris, Dragon is 1750, and they both have one 512x512 color + spec map. They're mostly inspired by the world of warcraft art style, but with higher tris/resolution.
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Assuming that these two are going to paired together, you still need to make a collar and chain, or something like that. A chain with big heavy links would look cool, but might not work since the dragon is a bit dainty.
As I was telling you earlier, I still think making the goblin a bit more pale green, with the dragon being pinkish might look really cool. If you dont like that, I think red or orange (or somewhere in between) would be the best colour options for the dragon.
You also may want to adjust the goblins face a bit more, to make him look a little more harmless, as the dragon is.
Keep going!
The Goblin is boring. His design is boring, the materials in his clothes are boring. His proportions are boring.
His proportions are very uniform and nothing really stands out. Everything is evenly sized. You say it's WoW inspired; one of the major aspects of WoW's art direction is highly exaggerated proportions. Things are uneven and impractical but highly recognizable with interesting silhouettes. You should try pushing the proportions a lot more. You have nothing to lose by experimenting, you can always roll back to a save file with what you had before.
Paint more lighting information into the texture. This is one of the big things lacking on this guy. He comes off as very flat. On low poly models you have to paint in all of the form and detail of your character because you don't have enough tris to actually give it all shape. You have to fake the lighting to paint in the forms and details. Add small edge highlights and shadows to objects that are raised above other surfaces, like the suspenders and the belts. Add highlights to upward facing surfaces or surfaces that are exposed to where light would hit. Shade areas that would be in shadow. You're getting there with the face but the rest of the body for some reason you left flat. Check out more low poly models to see how they really define the lighting, form and details in the texture. There are many artists on Polycount that do this stuff amazingly well, so just look around.
The design could use more spicing up. You're limited by mirrored UVs but that doesn't mean you can't be clever about where you put the detail. Add a tattoo to the arm and cover it up on one side. Add simple details to break up large areas, even wrinkles will help. Runes in the blade of the dagger for instance.
I like the dragon but also paint more lighting information onto him. There are lots of resources online about painting textures for low poly models.
Good luck continuing with these guys. I hope you are willing to go back and do some more work on them because they could be really good if you just push them a bit further.:)
I like your idea about giving him a tattoo on one shoulder. I dont think I'll put runes on his sword, as it makes him look awfully bad ass, and I want him to seem more goofy, incompotent, ramshackle, and scrappy. I like the increase in contrast that you did on it though, and it could use more detail.
I'll push the proportions more and break up the shape of the pauldron with edges.
The most obvious difference between the paintover and my model is the overall contrast and lighting. The images I posted are unlit screenshots. In the rendered image from before, the overall shading/contrast was about the same as in your image once I got the spec map working well, but I will paint the shadows in more once I start working on the texture. One problem I've been having is getting the seams to match up, but I'll try using ZApplink .
Furthermore, I don't think MoP's goblin blows this one away. I would say they are very comparable. jmt's has a quarter of the texture space, and less than half the tris.
It's true that nothing on the goblin stands out as "original", but I don't believe this character was made with the intention of being extremely unique. To me, it seems like an exercise in doing a fantasy character that is a known quantity.
Anyways, the changes you made have been great. At this point you must be close to being finished with the goblin. I would say move on to the dragon, since the dragon will most likely end up stealing the show anyways, it will be important to do him right. Good work.