The film effect can look very nice indeed. Just remember to play with exposure and gamma levels, along with RGB curves in the color managment panel to get the desired effect. Also using the “Look” filter to emulate different cameras is a good setting to play with too.
Heres an example of the difference these options can make to a rendered image (Using your latest posted image)
Hey great job! Definitely a great improvement from before. If you feel like you want to refine this even more, here are some major things that could need fixing, but for which it may already be too late to fix, without changing the whole image. I´d propably advise you to leave this one be, and move on to your next artwork.
With that being said, here´s what I think could be improved:
-the face: Creating believable and likeable faces is really the hardest task there is, and this is something almost every artist struggles with. I think you have a good start, but his face doesnt look very interesting. It´s fairly flat and the eye area looks kind of strange.
There is much space for improvement here, but this can be very(!) time consuming.
-the hair: His beard and chest hair look great in my opinion, but his main hair and his eyebrows look too smooth and perfect. some radomness and fuzzness would improve the look.
-the thing in his hand: I simply have no idea what he´s holding in his left hand. Is it a blade? something out of plastic? I simply don´t know. Try to make it something people can recognize easily, otherwise you´ll leave the viewer confused.
I wish you all the best, on this Image and on future projects. Keep progressing, and try to create as much and diverse work as you can
For the thing in the hand, this is a bokken : a japanese wooden sword. I practice Aïkido and in my mind a such object is natural. I didn’t think this wouldn’t be obvious. I take note of your advices for my next projects, because I want to move on my next artwork now, I already drew the idea.