thx I think normal maps tend to make everthing hard and dirty shaded which is a very bad thing for skin. So, Im useing a skin shader now and i reduced the shadeing in the diffuse and also reduced the specularity, but im still useing a dark diffuse as the spec map: (Hard surface stuff is still very wip)
looks sweet! push the contrasts a bit more, right now i like the diffuse only picture better than the one with normals... the ears really look good :P and i like the slime coming out of his mouth. good luck! keep it up!
I think your on the right track by deciding to paint the diffuse a bit more. I would actually up the ambient on the normal mapped model tone the normal map down just a hair, and actually get a really good spec map going. the Spec is the weakest part right now. Looks sweet.
Too much shading painted into the diffuse. Combined with the normal map it's just making everything black. Too much specularity on the skin is giving it the Doom 3 "plastic wrap" look. Needs something to offset the green bit up top, it's pretty unbalanced. Green highlight on the crotch, maybe? Could use something to break…