Decals and vertex painting aren't going to give great results either. You should step back and look into modular asset creation and how that works. That's how modern games are built.
Don't use nurbs. The tools for it are weak, it's slower than working with subdiv models. Having to clean up models after converting nurbs to subdivs is just an extra step and a time waster.
I ran through the steps again, changed the matieral name, gave it a brown fill layer, and exported it out and it worked this time. I'm not sure what the hold up was before though...
Fantastic work Marie. Your color work is definitely a step above from what we're used to seeing. It's always a pleasure to stumble upon something like this on polycount :) Keep it up!
use whatever it takes to communicate the final thought/concept/image. Personally, I find working fully digital to be faster for every step of the concept process, even if mimicking the marker 'look'.
Flats! The next step for me is separating the different parts of the paintinginto different layers. I tend to do that with flat colors. These colors are more like place holders instead of final color.
Oh yes, I plan to retopologize it after the sculpting (seeing as this is all new to me, I want to try to do as many of the various steps in the workflow as logically possible - to learn them)
thanks for the link, Ill have to try hair tomorrow. But a big step (for me ) I figured out how to unwrap the head. So the start of a texture on that. constructive crits are always welcome.
Played a bit more this afternoon. I'm happy to go back to the straight up/down bounce if needs be, but here's the next step: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4627207/Animation/BasketballBounceHorizontal1.mov