Final sculpt looks great, but I think you have to much contrast going on in your textures from a macro perspective. for example the skin is really dar and the armor really white.
Really like this new direction olivierth :) I second the notation that the anime armor is silly. However I have seen some interesting designs before in anime, that one is not an example though.
its not as simple as the normal maps being right or wrong, just look at this thread for example http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=68173 There's no standard how to bake/display normal maps.
looks cool, i would maybe think of the functionality of it all a bit and made small changes, for example, the tube leading to the shoulder pad might look better gong into the backpack thing .
Glad to be of some help :) Here is a more precise example regarding the choice of lens : As you can see there are huge consequences in terms of distortion, focus, and in the way things relate in the space of the canvas.
I think you need to be more specific about which aspects you were responsible for. For example, in the car racing clip, did you also create the models and textures, etc?
Blending textures via vertex color isn't voodoo.. In Shaderforge, for example, it would take you 5 minutes to make this: http://acegikmo.com/shaderforge/wiki/index.php?title=Texture_Splatting#Using_Vertex_colors
There's about 2 people in our 170-person studio that regularly post on polycount. Perhaps a couple more who post on 3DTotal and other forums. None of them are leads. Just an example...
More hand studies. The second digital one was more of an attempt to speedpaint a bit to capture quick values/form after I spent too long focusing on details on the first example.
If you're going to put a question as the title of a thread, it's a decent choice to write the answer to that question directly on your post (quoted from the website), instead of only a link to the external site. Example: