Thanks Jeepster!
Yep, I hope this helps. Check out the Image and blend file.
Here’s my weekend project I’ve been working on. I decided to take one of my old projects from a couple of years ago, and rework it. What do you guys think an improvement?
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awesome 
thanks for the explanation of the nodes! That was pretty clever to give the iris some emission…I’ll have to remember that
edit:
the character’s looking pretty good too - but I think he could use some skin pore displacement. It looks like you might already have some pore displacement going on in the forehead, but the specular highlight on the left makes the skin look really smooth
I’m not sure if GIMP supports this, but I learned in photoshop you can go to filters->Other->High Pass and make a pretty good bump texture from the diffuse texture
Thanks for the tip jeepster. I’ll give that a try tomorrow. I totally overlooked the pores displacement map
Something new!
What do you do when your college puts you on hold for 35-40 minutes, and you have nothing to do but stare at your phone? You sculpt something in Blender of course! 
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Really, really, reeeeeaaaallly like your work . . . especially this last post (#26). Quality workmanship. Thanks for sharing your talent with us.
How do you achieve the fine sculpted details . . . are you using custom alpha brushes close in? Curious. I’ve been toying around with some sculpts but have yet to nail down the custom skin sorta look. I get the main forms but am trying to figure out the best practices for getting the fine details to polish them. Thoughts?
Thanks Astro, I’m glad you like my work! Sometimes I feel like my stuff is ok at best. To answer your question though, I do use quite a few different alpha brushes to get fine detail in hair, skin and other stuff. I’ve looked at your sketchbook here on the forum, but I couldn’t find anything you’ve done that’s organic (Lots of awesome space ships though!). Maybe you could post one of your WIP’s here and I could give you some tips?