Unwraps should be packed together as close as humanly possible because pixels don't bleed with compression. Burn your AO at 100 multiply into your textures for the most realistic effects. References are only for realistic work. /sarcasm
Trying to make "realistic characters" != Uncanny Valley, dead corpses, ugly toys. 3d Artist != 3d Monkey Too many hours working in Game Art != Vision Loss Too much WoW != no game art skill leveling Too much posts in Polycount != loss of social life, no game art... Working with polygons != can make you stupid, you see…