Awesome for @ndy, Espcially I like the position how the character is rendered and the glowing eye, and I like the shadows a lot.
What exactly is Gimp and what is pure blender? before I start to try something wish I can’t archive 
Great work, @ndy! Now I’m going to go and download your artist video tutorial from www.blender.org! 
I agree with Rocketman about the model, though.
you get a new level @ndy.
(it’s finished over-glowed picture )
here there is: very good composition, shapes, texture’s work and lighting.
Only background 'd deserve a bit more work.
thumb up!
Great.
Greetings:
Amazing, the lighting and materials are superb, great work 
tasty! love the eye. the translucency on the ear is a nice touch. lighting and modelling are great. no idea hw you did the moon stone for the eye, but feel free to post the material.
Very nice
Stefano
Great work @ndy - The character design is really nice.
i cant say more than that its good. really good.
That is very impressive. There is something about the quality and depth of the skin texture that reminds me of Lox and King Nozo. Is that just from hours of slaving away at gimp or is there some handy technique you have for getting that consistency?
LoL I just saw the small preview image and thought, what the hell should be so good? Than I opened the thread and … well, very nice work, like allways!
That looks very impressive- Would you be able to give out any hints, tutes as to how you managed the texturing and lighting?
You can see some color patches on the skin which seem kinda painted, but other than that, flawless.
supernoob wrote
slaving away at gimp …?
@ndy uses corel software i think. and I’m pretty sure endi has a copy of deep paint 3D. GIMP is a great program which i use all the time, but not the best for painting.
I hope you don’t mind, but that image is now my desktop background.
Sweet! I really like the lighting, the proportions - and the eye, of course :P. Hand painted translucency effect, right?
He maybe used the new programable shaders in new blender?? You can get reall nice SSS effect with that.
But we don’t know for sure until @ndy posts his use of techniqe here.
translucency requires having a light source close behind, or better yet, inside of a mesh, so when you use it, just put a lamp right where you want the effect, right there inside of the mesh, and it should look just about like @ndys once you get it adjusted.
<edit> a crappy example: bird model on the left, and on the right, same crappy bird, but with a lamp inside it and a voronoi texture set to ‘trans’
http://home.att.net/~yorik/birdbulb.jpg
I knew I’d find my new desktop wallpaper before I even viewed this thread.
This is stunning.
ok there are much questions here to @ndy
but i don’t see @ndy that reacts(nice picture @ndy)