Hi
This is my latest, it’s been a while since I posted in here :).
there are a few things I’m not sure at, for start his hair is just not right, the far hills don’t feet, and I can’t shake the feeling something is missing 
C&C are welcome.
Hey, Nice work there its pretty amazing. If possible try moving the sword to a different angle, and maybe some different clouds something more refined and does he have any eyes yet? your right about the far hills possibly make them a bit fluffier if you know what i mean and the grass is a bit plain maybe some flowers or weeds and such, you could possibly give him a shield and make a little more central, not to much though. but on the whole i like it keep going at it.
The modeling of the guy is pretty nice (excepting the fact that he has no eyes). The only thing that sticks out to me is that the lighting is un-natural and tinny. You may want to work on that. With… I dunno. Maybe low-power grey-blue additive ambient occlusion, a frontlighting, low-power hemilight, and… He’d need to be backlit from the sun.
You have a decent sky texture, but it is not used well. Try simply setting it as a world texture with sphere mapping.
thanks for the replies.
BlackBoe: he has eyes, they are just white :). (I will texture them later).
The lights are prety simple, there is one sun and plain ambient occolusion, doesn’t that fit for an outdoor scene?
Haden and cowdude: I will give it a try.
Blender nation featured an awome lighting tute last month: http://www.itchy-animation.co.uk/light.htm it might be useful (i certainly did).
If you go to part 3 it talks about outdoor lighting. Heres a diagram from the article of an overcast day:
Basicly there is a bright sun off to the right and a large gray area light above to simulate the transmission of light through the sky. - Maybe a blue/gray area light or hemi light is what you need. Anyway it talks about it in more detail in the tute.
Hope this helps… btw you model and and grass is really good. Did you make the grass using fibre?
Well, isn’t that what Ambient Occulosion do? making the world material transmit light towards the model?
Anyway I will read that tut soon (I did read all kinds of tuts about half a year ago regarding light setups, maybe I do need to refresh my memory).
The grass is just a Grid with static particles (lots of them :)) 
Edit: oops, it seems this is one of the tutorials I read about half a year ago
OK,
here are some updates:
changed the far hills’ material just a bit, and added a second light source (Hemi), changed the sky to a more dawn-like time. I will need to change the hills some more, strangly the addition of the hemi light, caused the render time to be much longer.
I’m thinking about changing the idea just a bit, I have another character (an Orc) I never finished, and I think it would be nice finishing it, and making them as if they battle each other.
I really don’t like his skin material on his face, it’s really un-realistic. How can I make it more realistic? I’m lazy, so I always afraid to start UV-mapping (I did not do it so many times either).
Also, I textured his eyes 
I think about adding a few trees in the far hills, just to make it more interesting:)
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That looks SO much better - the change in lighting and background made a huge difference. I also like how his face now turns into the viewer - as if he’s challengeing it or something.
Yeah i need to look into AO abit more, sorry - i only change the number of samples at the moment - maybe you could do the same thing as the hemi light but change the colour of the AO to somthing more realistic… anyway what you’ve got loks great. I agree, more trees to the left and maybe some rocks would make enhance it. You could also try bringing the figure into the shot abit more to help composition wise.
With regards to his face, i think it could be improved if his hair was not as sparse and flat, and had more life - like, it would be better if it had abit more body, if thats the right way to say it. Maybe a change in the texture might help so that the colour got darker as it approached the roots of the hair.
here is a close-up of the face.
I added some eyebrows.
What should I do to make his face more photo-realistic.
I will submit my other character soon. I don’t know if I should add it to the scene or not.
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Re: the face, that’s because its material is currently a solid surface, look into artificial SSS or something. If you google, I’m sure you could find plenty, but I could always dig up a couple for you too.
BlackBoe: thanks so much, this does seem to be a great improvment.
I found the MHSSS script that fakes SSS. the result is quite nice.
I used this tut:
http://feeblemind.tuxfamily.org/dotclear/index.php/2005/05/18/41-mh-tutorial-using-the-subsurface-scattering-script
and downloaded it from here:
http://mediawiki.blender.org/index.php/Scripts/Catalog/Materials
I didn’t render this one with hair, because it would just waste render time :).
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The skin looks alot better than before, but its abit too bright… can you turn down the reflectivity or something to that effect using the script?
Great modelling and idea. I agree that something is missing in the left background. I think you could fill this space in a few ways:
- trees, as some people have already said
- some sort of dramatic mountainscape/other more interesting terrain, i.e, lake or cliffs
- possibly some type of architecture?
Those are just some ideas. I would personally change the landscape and then decide if the orc should be in the scene.
Nice work so far.
I’d suggest either having the orc and warrior in some sort of dramatic battle pose, one lying at the others feet, or possibly just the warrior standing atop another pile of rocks.
Great modelling and texturing work all round, the hair needs more variation though