Damn, for a second i though there was an art thief in our midst! I dig the hovercraft, but i think you would benefit from some smaller detailed bits like wires/bolts be it to actually help out the silhouette or just for the highpoly (if you're doing one)
Try editing the leaf normals with something like normalthief: http://www.scriptspot.com/3ds-max/scripts/normal-thief You can find more information about it here: http://wiki.polycount.com/CategoryEnvironmentFoliage?highlight=%28%5CbCategoryEnvironment%5Cb%29
one thing you could try is making sure the hair planes normals match the normals of the head mesh, it makes quite a bit of a difference: this plugin for max can help with it: http://www.scriptspot.com/3ds-max/scripts/normal-thief
Come on people, chill a little out please... I didn't know anything about the not google thing btw. Anyway, The quote was from Aladdin the King of Thiefs, the third movie out of the trilogy. Matabus can have his turn
mmh a tool to project normal from underlying object might be useful. I was thinking about it for max. Normal Thief takes the normal of the closest vert, but normal of the closest point on face would be more accurate. An that would fix that kind of "artefact". Don't know if it exists for Maya.
Watch some cartoons. Especially old ones (because new ones use CG vs hand drawing everything). If you can find some storyboards/production art, you'll see how much work goes in each scene. Taken from The Thief and The Cobbler
Very attractive concept! It makes me want to dig out my Thief CDs :) I really like the facial structure of your model aswell, keep it up... though I think his hips start a little low, that or the chest plate is too long. -DK >^..^<
Congratulations for the great results! It looks very smooth and enjoyable, despite the Camtasia resource thief. Parallax scrolling background layer reminds me to great old time games like Psygnosis' Shadow of the Beast, anyone remember? (20 years ago!?! Gosh, I'm feeling old).
If you get into more complex foliage, like a bush made out of planes you might want to check out a script called "Normal Thief". It aligns the somewhat chaotic normals of the planes to match a target object and it really helps with shadowing.
I have a thief character who has some weapons kinda floating around him, but lets say i want him to grab these weapons at some point, draw out his sword ... is there a way to make that weapon attach to his hand?