Staff of Evil:

Alright, here's an in-progress shot of the staff model. This image is the normal map + ambient + spec in maya 2008. I'll be tweaking the spec and normals to get rid of some of the darkness around the sharp edges and adding a color map later on. I'm starting to get a little worried about poly-counts now because the staff is currently sitting comfortably at no less than 1,580 triangles. I tried to encourage it to loose some of it's girth, but the bastard was persistent. If I chop off any more, I end up with a model that doesn't accurately represent the concept. With that in mind, I'm now shooting for a 15,000 poly budget for all assets. I'm still going to shoot for ~10,000 for the actual lich model, but I'm sitting around 3,000 tris for the accessories alone. That and the collection of 7 shrunken heads are looking to hog about 2,500 tris. I think I'll be able to do it, but it's going to be tight.