I hope that this is the right place to post. I just finished watching the Johnny Blender 2.0 series by David Ward and have been using it to fine tune my model for animation (it’s a caricature of my nephew who wants to be a rapper). I want to animate it but still working on the weight painting, I need crits on the model, textures used and the lighting.[ATTACH=CONFIG]140117[/ATTACH][ATTACH=CONFIG]140118[/ATTACH]
a few points i noticed:
- it seems quite high poly - the common technique is to create a lower poly mesh and apply a subsurf moifier after the armature, but that won’t end the world, and you’ll probably know more about this than me.
- you say it’s a characature, so if I knew the person in question it might make more sense, but his chin seems quite pointy, looks a bit like something that occurs when modelling from a non-symetrical reference image whilst using a mirror modifier…
- other than that, the mesh looks pretty good, the topology is nice and even, and it’s all in [characatured at least ] proportion, which is harder to achieve than you would think.
- some points about rendering are that you need to look into reflections and reflection textures for the glasses.
- also, i’m not quite sure what he’s wearing… it looks a bit like a latex bin bag.
- you might want to look into sub surface scattering for the skin
I know i’ve said a lot, but you’ve done most of the hard work, you just need to spend a bit of time tweaking things. 
Looking pretty good, I can tell you’ve put a lot of effort into this already!
I second Casio about the amount of polys, there are so many it’s hard to tell how they flow.
I think you definitely need to decide which way to go, realistic or toony. This is sitting a little too much in the middle.
Can we see your reference?
I really question the glasses, eyes are so important…wait I just remembered Johnny Bravo. Still you need to rig the glasses as if they were eyes, all of your expression will come from this region.
I’m sure everything but the head is WIP, the shirt really needs lots of love though.
Keep it up, you are sure to have a nice character soon.
I always wonder if you and other people do such project for fun, or you earning money for it. I mean i do it for fun too, but this modelling seem to be very complex and it took maybe a lot of time. Whatever. I just can give the advice to you that subsurf scattering is made for skin but also take a lot of render time!!
For reference I used a little video that he has posted on Facebook of him talking about his mix tape (he’s 16 and is trying to cut a demo in our local area).I worked on the chin some and I am working on the shirt, I’ll post an update when I can. The glasses were an inside joke but I’m thinking that it might look better without them. This project is for fun to help my nephew have something cool for his video but if it leads to paying work from local guys, I’m not against that either. One problem I have is that when I move the head the hair particles don’t move with it… Any suggestions?
refresh them by moving back a frame and forward again
here is an update to the model. I worked on the chin some and tried to make the shirt look more like a shirt. I also applied sss to the skin.I figured out the hair problem also (had to re-do the particle system). Aside from a few more tweeks are there any good tutorials on how to animate in 2.5?
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It does look a tad better, but the clothes still look like bin bags…
What is a “bin bag”?
= bin bag.
it’s just the way they’re black and very shiny…
look at some reference images of the clothes you want him to wear, that always helps heaps.
Here is an update with a different texture for the shirt.
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Here is my first test animation. Let me know what needs to be improved.
I take it you’re just testing your rig?
If so, you might want to rig the shoulders, just so you can move them slightly to make it look more natural.
secondly, when you do things like talking etc. the golden rule is to remember everything on a human is always moving, even if it’s a couple of millimeters.
you might want to get a video of your nephew at a similar camera angle, get him to act out what you want him to do, and copy it finely.
Yes, it was a test of rig. Thank you for the input on the movement, I still have a lot to learn but I think with the help of this forum I am on the right path.
Here is an update. I am going to add speakers in the background and on the sides but not real sure how to animate them. Does anybody have a suggestion or can point me in the direction of a good tutorial?
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Here is another update.
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Here is another rig test.
Overall your modelling is good. maybe add a little more detail to the shape keys on the mouth, also if you add some procedural cloth textures to the shirt to get the stitching look would bring it out quite nicely.
also if you change your background in the world settings to black it will look more like a studio.
and you can also animate the cones of the speakers to the music using shape keys
and for the lighting, try having a single sun lamp aimed in from the side, and some spot lights with different colours and animate them, this could give that disco lighting effect (don’t over do it!) 
But overall good job well done
Animation test. Let me know how to improve.
FYI, my British friend, here in the States, we would recognize the term “trash bag”. Just another one of our charming little idiosyncrasies. I must agree with you though, I see a plastic trash bag there as well.