i think i’ll choose the polygon one for the hair. But i’m going to use particles for the eyebrows and eyelashes
i look forward to seeing how you get on 
i always find eyelashes tricky to get right so im interested in seeing how you do it
actually i don’t use any “magic trick” in creating eyelashes. i made eyelashes for my characters by putting the particles on around the eyes manually, one by one (seriously :D). i didn’t use child particles because it’s hard to control for this purpose. The most important parts are the texturing and setting the strand size of the hair (i usually use blender units and set the strand size to 0.00x). To make it easier to control the particles, i set the keys to 3. These are some models i made previously:
FChar by Agus Karisma by AgusKarisma, on Flickr
i made this one using Blender 2.49b.
Balinese Kid by AgusKarisma, on Flickr
i made the eyelashes short on this character since it’s meant to be male…
very nice models im guessing theres simply no easy method to fake good eyelashes then? suppose theres no replacement for good honest hard work
really nice job on your other models also
Some people prefer using polygon instead. But drawing good texture is much harder to me so i choose to use particle effect…:o. The drawback is that if i try to retopo my mesh, the particles will need to be rearranged or even be replaced…
yeah i know what you mean but hopefully you dont have to retopologize this one. are you going to be using him in a personal project then or is it just to showcase your talents?
there’ll be an animation competition in my country. I planned to follow it but now i doubt i’ll make it on time. but i think i will just keep progressing.
anyway, here’s my update (not a big progress though 
)
full char render by AgusKarisma, on Flickr
front render 1 by AgusKarisma, on Flickr
front render 2 by AgusKarisma, on Flickr
i’m not satisfied with the hairstyle so i think i’m going to make a new hair for it…
i think the hair looks a little too perfect, I think it just needs roughing up a bit either with a texture displacement map or adding in a couple of stray ones. other than that it looks really good i know it looks cartoony but i really like the eyes they almost have a glow to them are you going for a flat skin texture or are you going to go with SSS etc? im curious to know how your going to colour the lips as it always leaves me stumped lol
Here’s the small update:
NORMAL FACE RENDER by AgusKarisma, on Flickr
i added texture with slightly different color and also eyelashes. I also add some hair strands and add specular map for the lips.
Update Full Render by AgusKarisma, on Flickr
Have you tried using separate emitter meshes for your hair systems? I’ve done this with both head hair (like a wig), facial hair, and eyebrows, and have been experimenting with eyelashes as well. This allows some revisions to the main character mesh that would otherwise disrupt the hair systems, though you have to be careful to keep the main mesh & the hair mesh(es) properly matched in vertex weighting for animation purposes.
I use separate emitter for the eyebrows, but for the eyelashes i used to using the body mesh itself as the emitter. Anyway, there are some new features for hair particles that i can’t figure out yet. In the Vertexgroups tab there are some option to control like density, kink and so forth. i’ve tried some experiments to use them but the only one option i can understand is density. is there any manual or tutorial about how to use them?