For the look of the hair I wanted to do something clean, not your ordinary dirty warrior because this guy is a Prince, as you can see; his fighting clothes (armour, belt, sword, etc.) are refined with ornaments and gold.  So, here's a pre-viz of the hair (WIP here, at this stage of the project):

Lighting (Refining Light)

I made the light based on the painting of the boxer (please see the concept stage for more detail).  I wanted a dark look, but at the same time with a little harmony and contrast to push out the forms and the philosophy of the world of the character.  Technically speaking, I played around with spot lights and omni lights (no GI was used, just a simple HDRI map on the environment).  Here's a board of the scheme of the light rig:

Compositing

This character deserved a sweet composite!  For this, I didn't use any special passes, just a direct render from 3D and the background was rendered separately from the character to make it easier to work with.  Here're the layers (almost all of them in Soft Light blending mode) of the composite that I used to paint and tweak the image:


After this, it was good to have renders of some views of the model.  Just for fun and for experimenting, I gave some love and time to the presentation of the model.  I attached a silhouette here for evaluation proposes (it's always good to put a graphic icon to see how the shapes of the model works in terms of negative spaces, mass, dynamism, proportions, etc.):




So, this is it!  I hope you have enjoyed this as much as I loved creating it.  I will keep going with my other 5 characters and try my luck, always trying to improve my skills in order to develop as both an artist and a person.  If you have any questions, please email me: malanjo@gmail.com

Malanjo – http://www.malanjo.com