Working outwards to something less human but I'm not sure it works as well as I'd like. I take every model as a learning process though. All done in Blender, sculpted, baked, normal and diffuse maps only. I threw in some shape keys for expressions. There's a four light rig and the renders are in Blender's internal.
part of the problems I've encountered have to do with the sculpt's initial posing which was with the mouth wide open. While this makes it easier to apply shape keys, having a more neutral expression would have helped. There's got to be a balance. Any extreme of expression makes animation of the retopped model a right pain. I also got too involved in the retop and got it over-detailed (though very pretty) which also made animating awkward.
I think I might try a detailed bump map on this one for practice and see what happens.
