There's a rhythm to their work. It's no secret, it just comes from practice. There's a certain amount of stiffness that I found when learning zbrush. I eventually got over it. Along the way one develops ways of using the brushes that create satisfactory results.
He's got a point tho, location is posted on nearly every job, and with people from all over the world, it is common practice to at least put the continent you company is located in. It will save lots of un necessary posts like this one!
Fundamentals and time. You need to focus primarily on composition at the moment. Don't state the time of completion if it was only 30 minutes or an hour... then they qualify more for speed paint practices than concept pieces to be used by production artists of all kinds.
I definitely agree with this being a bit time Steve Job's fault. I mean go back to when he was still alive on the board of Disney and Bob Iger mentions Disney taking a lot of Job's business practices to heart.
I finished the sculpt and am now either looking at retopo for practice or polypainting... or, maybe both, yay! Can't say enough thanks for all the help i received here when asking about stylized hair creation =D
Familiarize yourself with the PBR workflow, and how the shader interprets each map. (alb,spec,roughness,transparency,etc) http://www.marmoset.co/toolbag/learn/pbr-practice http://seblagarde.wordpress.com/2012/04/30/dontnod-specular-and-glossiness-chart/
Day 5 Thanks a lot for the feedback Jacob! Now I see that the cheekbones are too big. I will practice elder people and manly men to see the planes and I'll go for the ladies later when I understand the forms of the head.
I find it rather telling of the current climate that you have to ask, but you don't need permission to practice modeling from concepts created by others. You should be fine using concepts for learning. It's covered under fair use.
Don't get discouraged simply because your post didn't get any comments. It just means that nobody had the time or inclination to critique your work. It doesn't mean anything in and of itself. Keep going! Practice, improve, etc.
I think adding a pommel would help the unbalanced feel and from a practical standpoint would reduce the likelihood of it slipping out of the wielder's hand when swung. It could be just a little nub on the end or something a bit more fancy.