Quote - Thanks gang!

Yeah, the line work there could have been softer.  The ears are just a flat color actually (and I don't think I did much sculpting on them). I only used a front projection for the photo texture work, so most of what you're seeing isn't photo, it's painted color. Truth told, I prefer hand painting a texture over using photos. I think photos should be used primarily for reference not for the actual map but I'm pretty alone in that when it comes to the Poser-verse.  I like the old school method of painting on sculptures and if I had my way, that'd be how we'd handle textures. In a situation like that, most of the work would be done in the actual sculpt/bump/displacement, with color being used to enhance that work. Instead, we tend to see folks relying on photos to do the bulk of the work, often even using the diffuse map as a bump map.  Then again, I'm just a modeler, so I could be talkin' out me butt.

 

I agree on the texturing. That's how I do mine. I just use photos as a base to build off of. It's too much photoshop work to try matching all the skin tones, even when all your photos come from the same reference. 

You should check out Scott Spencer if you haven't yet. Aside from being an excellent modeler, he has some great painting lessons in his first book, where he shows how to build realistic skin tones in zbrush using all primary colors and just spraypainting the model. When he's done it looks as real as any photos can get. 

I use his techniques along with photos, and I think it comes out a lot better than just photos alone. 

 

~Shane