Looking good. I recently watched the tutorial on 3dmotive for this stuff. Personally I would say the blood splatter isn't really adding much. In fact I would say it is actually flattening your piece out. Try getting more of a color pallet in there. You really only have one color with a change in value. Play with hue and…
I agree with passerby, still need to push those values a little farther - in that tutorial video the artist makes a great point of using the proper range of values when going from lights to darks. Don't limit yourself to the only the top of the color picker!
I think this is looking really good so far, and I like that you didn't just make the mesh and recreate the texture in the tutorial. but I feel like you could push your lights and darks more. it doesn't really feel like anything, especially the hilt, is catching any light. I really want to see how you can push this forward,…