After finish the main posing using Maya, I imported the mesh into modo and made some adjustments directly on the mesh, especially around the arm pits, where the skin is often not that great. I also spent a lot of time on the facial expression, focusing on the smile and also on the general look – never forget the look, it is so important. Then I modeled the bikini and refined the hat shape (Fig.03).


Concerning the texturing, I did most of this after finishing the model of the character, apart from the body's textures because they were all done (as I'd used this model before). I mainly reworked the skin color to give a slight tanned effect. I created the hair, hat and bikini textures, as you can see in Fig.04.



To light the scene I started by activating the Indirect Illumination in the Global Illumination panel of the render. I modified the directional light by activating the Physical Sun. I modified the angle and parameters of this guy using the Time and North Offset parameters to light the character from behind. And I created two area lights at the front to simulate the reflection panel used in photography (Fig.05).


For the skin texture I used a diffuse color for the surface and added a second texture, this time a Subsurface with a darker color (Fig.06). Using these two textures together gave me a good skin result and meant the light would work properly on the character.