This is just a test render with hair paintover. I was having problems with the hair. Good thing Max Evil of Blenderartists forum suggested a great tutorial about doing realistic hair painting. The hair is painted in Gimp using a mouse. I have to say, it turned out pretty great but if you zoom in that's when you'll see the faults (I'm not telling where :p). Here's the link to the tutorial.
Here's a test render of her further tweaked face. She looks more mature now than before. I originally planned to stick with the reference image I had but decided to try experimenting on her current topology. Certain looks can't be achieved if your topology is already formed unless you're gonna delete or add vertices. But in this case, I already have my textures done so changing the topology would entitle me to re-work on the textures as well, which is a hassle. I just push and pulled vertices here and there to achieve this look without adding or deleting any vertices.
Here's a render with the "smile" shape key I've added.
I've played around with Blender's compositor and got this result. I've rigged her so if ever I change my mind about a pose I can easily do it. The lighting on the previous image is pretty much what I'm sticking with. I like it's simplicity, how it brings out the highlights on her left side. Although what I really wanna achieve there is a well-distributed specular highlight, but I couldn't with my previous tests. I'm currently looking for ways to achieve that.
Here's what I'm talking about:
If you look at the bright specular highlights on the left of the character's head you'll see that the pores aren't visible anymore due to high specularity but I can't seen to achieve that in Blender.
This, so far, is what I have now. Her topology looks odd from this angle. I might have to tweak it some more.
