The next step was all the other small pieces. I wanted to keep the colors subdued because the skin was going to be really prominent and I didn't want them to clash. At this point I also quickly laid down the texture for the clothes, such as a simple leather and cloth texture. This was mostly for color previewing (Fig.12).


For the head I used the mental ray miss_fast_skin shader. Before any textures were applied, I set up all my SSS layers. I knew from the start what colors I wanted so it was all down to getting the right settings and balance between mainly the epidermal and subdermal. I was trying to get a fleshy look, but with a deep blue/purple right under the surface. I kept the diffuse on a little just to smooth out and desaturate the test render (Fig.13).


For the final setup, I plugged in the SSS node into the Additional Color of an mia_material. I did this so I could use the reflection/gloss from that material instead of the specular/reflection of the skin material (Fig.14).


The diffuse maps were done in Bodypaint. It was a combination of photo textures and hand painting. I was especially mindful of the subdermal map. I painted things like veins and tattoos to get that "under the skin” look (Fig.15).


Here is the raw render of the textured head (Fig.16).


For the eyes, I modeled them pretty normally with separate pieces for the eyeball/cornea/iris. I was really experimenting when it came to the look of the eye. I wanted the eyes to definitely stand out on the character so I chose to darken the white part and kind of exaggerate the bump and reflectivity. I used a SSS shader for the eyeball itself with some noise for the different skin layers. (Fig.17)