Arena Net Test Iguanamimus
polycounter lvl 7
Hey everyone. I'm now taking the test for Arena Net's creature artist intern position. This is the first draft of my model. I'm currently working on the secondary details (skin folds, eye sockets, claws, etc.) Hopefully the silhouette looks good overall. Please let me know if you think anything needs to be tweaked at this stage. I can't do a good job on this model without your feedback. Thanks. 
Replies
I was just a little bit hesitant at first, I wasn't sure I was allowed to.
I feel that now he looks more like the concept.
Also try and make it so you can reuse those spikes to save on UV space.
It'd be worth grabbing some pictures of actual iguanas to see how the skin folds and wrinkles, particularly in the loose skin around the jaw and neck. There's some interesting looking folds that you can kind of see in the shadowed underside of the concept that'd definitely be worth working into your model.
I feel it needs more subtle colour and value variations, if i squint my eyes to blur the image, all im seeing is a bright green back and a dark shade of green for the neck/head/chest
I feel like areas need to pop more.
The darker parts look very odd for me.
And personally I think that the parts I've selected should have some time of transitions. The transition in model is great, but in color is weird.
Overall it looks rather ambient and materials could be tweaked a bit. Also I would add in a floor and have your lights cast an actual shadow instead of painting it in, it will help the model look more grounded
I agree with @Alemja about getting some rendered shadows in. Normally I do this by using a large flat colored plane, and then just photoshop it in to a background with the same color. You can mask your character for compositing pretty easily by using another render with transparency on.
I find the lighting could be improved. If you've got a three point lighting setup, it looks like the fill light might be a bit too strong towards the head. More contrast is needed around that area as it usually is the first thing people look at.
The key light could be focused on the head area more, fading out towards the tail. The concept art does this too if you look at it closely.
Hope that helps!
Instead of a cone light you could try a directional light and modify the shape to soften the shadows.
As for the textures, i dont know if too late for that, but I feel the under area of the lizard should be a lot darker, there might a reason why is there (maybe some disguising mechanism), so I am not sure if is a good idea to ignore it. And the eyes could be a bit smaller, it helps to make it less cute e more threatening.