Christmass 2350 would be a lot better if you went for more stylized style. In general it feels like you are somewhere in between and stylized. That is okay, but you definitely haven't mastered your unique way of doing things. Here are a couple of pointers. Pay more attention to your forms. The pirate cabin has weird angles…
A Character I did as a part of a upcoming movie project for my last employer as a character artist. I thank all who contributed to this and wish them well for the future. Polycount: 23K Copyright: Wama Studios Private Limited.
The Good 'ol Pach talks about the network being down. I know he gets some hate.. but I always enjoy watching Pachter talk. http://www.gametrailers.com/video/episode-215-pach-attack/713901
Hahaha... I've been re-freshing for the last 2.5 hours seeing as that's when it was supposed to go live. So I can kick this thing off before I head off to my basketball game tonight. Hahaha.
It usually implies visual depth. 255 blue tends to be standard, as it gets darker the shading will get darker on the normalmap, gotta be careful though because it'll go right down to black shading in-game and it'll look rubbish
Using these non-default settings that ott and gamedev mentioned are also much better for your render to texture normal / ao maps as well. The result will be much smoother. I tend to use catmull-rom and then max 2.5 or hammersley..
3dtotal is an old site but they have tons of "the making of" tutorials where authors share their process. but I will tell you it's very trial and error. I can tell you from watching Tor Frick's stream and others, a lot of industry pros have a "just do it" mentality. The only way to get better at something is to actually do…