The drum could use some more sides if the camera can get as close as in the first picture; I'd say at least 24 or even 32 sides instead of the current 16. The same is also true of the braziers. Unless you are targeting a mobile platform, don't be afraid to spend polygons where they are needed.
Are you using any kind of reference material ? Looks to me that you have too much polygons to play with but if that's your thing go ahead have fun , other then that you doing ok with small exception like things in the image below and forearm will need some volume and probably rotation adjustments
For a high poly you could round out the edges on the trim surrounding the shoulder area. The line could look a lot smoother since this is a high poly model, no need for those polygonal corners. Other than that its looking pretty accurate. Don't forget the inside of the helmet for when you render.
looks like ur making it too complicated. IMO just use a cylinder matched up with the reff and either use olssons method or use vertice snaps to match your edge loops. then take that whole cut out polygon and bevel, then cut out the profile and target weld it all together!
Agreed with felipealves. Apart from the sparkles this video is quite good. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPFxFGCMNO8 I also like drawing random lines with the polygonal lasso tool, filling a gradient and then using the hardlight filter. Do it a few times and then drop the opacity and it creates quite a nice fractal look.
Mop I think it is simply a matter of pressing the b key in the UV editor. It brings in a red circle brush behaving just like Maya paint tools. Funny how this was here for ages, way before soft sel was implemented for polygons! Might not be exactly what you are looking for but it's handy nonetheless...
I agree a lot fo this wont work when rendered to texture, at least not that well. Plus theres a lot of waste. Your project lead, be it a teacher or a game mod lead, needs to relax a little on what can and cant be done. Lots of polygons dont make a model, good polyflow does.
hmm how am i supposed to do this - i tried sculpting my concrete thing. then imported into max and max ran out of memory and crashed (only 1mil polygons!) i have 4gb of ram on win xp 32 (yeah i know 32 bit can't use all of it)
Adam, why go so low poly on much of the truck, then spend so many on the pipes on either side of the engine? I'll bet just those pipes alone on both sides are running upwards of 500 polygons yes? Its a good start, but I think you could be more economical.
ah yes, mr. dekard. Sadly i ran out of polygons for this and it was one of the last points I sacrificed. I could pretty easily add in 12 more tris and re-normal those. After i get my grade on this I'll probablly do just that thanks sirs :P