The trip actually looks pretty good, but I'd focus on practicing your run cycles for now. Create a whole bunch of different runs that look good to you, and then once you're comfortable with creating them, start adding additional animations like trips and such. Keep it up!
if you want to get a start on characters, im old school and started out with the Joan of Arc tutorial, and also the Swordmaster tutorial. now i believe they used 3DS Max on it but you can transfer those techniques to any 3d package with practice. good luck!
http://www.amazon.com/Digital-Lighting-Rendering-2nd-Edition/dp/0321316312 Is great. My favorite is a video though (cause you know save trees) by Jeremy Vickery (Pixar Lighting Stud): http://www.thegnomonworkshop.com/store/product/185/Practical-Light-and-Color#.U2AL7vldV8E
I agree with madcow's first thought, just model the low as 1 piece, watertight. You will get a better bake and increase your texel density by a metric ton. You should rarely/never combine multiple bakes in photoshop for a single object. That is bad practice.
He won't - he will always target the nearest enemy he can see. If you run past another enemy (or player, or turret etc), he will start attacking that instead. If he didn't work that way it'd be practically impossible to level one up to a GODliath.
Look at the way the light falls off certain features, like the cheeks and eyelids/brows, then compare it to your sculpt and try to replicate it. There are a lot of subtle features on the face you picked. Just keep practicing and eventually you'll train your eye and replicate them more.
Hey, just wondering if I can do the wraith king set for practice/fun. Not done a dota set before. Of course I won't release it, you have proof that you own the concepts so no worries there. I just want to try something different.
Thank you for your comment. Yes I need more practices, I will do some anatomy studies in zbrush I think. I tried to keep continue in my workflow until a Marmoset render (10k triangles), but I will work again on the model and textures.
practical advice, thank you gents. I have shopped around for easels, I was just looking to see if anyone had any specific recommendations or caveats. As for a sculpture stand, I definitely will go the diy route considering that even the cheapest stands are ridiculously expensive.
Thanks for your replies and your honesty. This took me 3 days to fully texture. I don't think that I was rushing. This was just an exercise to practice some basic texturing. The goal of this was to take an ordinary blank cube and make it somewhat interesting. It went form this: to this: to this: To finally this: