What a bad day
Due to some free days I started to dive into a little blender project testing or rather getting accustomed with blenders new sculpting, texturing tools and also wanted to put myself to the test of doing a full retopo from my dynamic topology sculpt (I tend to neglect that since I basically work with stills personally – animations only at work). I started off with a dynamic topology sculpt, did a full retopo on that to paint wrinkles, pores with mulitres modifier.
All the textures are handpainted (except for the back of the nose – it just didn’t get it right by hand) with blenders new texturing tools. For the diffuse map I used an ambient occlusion bake as base, some colors over it and blended it together with a few different noise patterns. Then cycles hair and shading. The water is ocean sim modifier with ripples for head, seaweed and drop (e.g. from the fishes fin) from dynamic paint.
And just a few compositing nodes for color, vignette, water spray on lens (too subtle maybe). I sent this image for inclusion in the first edition of the “Blender Art Book” and it was accepted. I feel deeply honored being featured in this book. I hope this is just the starting point.
http://youtu.be/mjYsvI1vKGQ