FMP: Alfodr, The Wizard - Polycount, rigging and presentation

One thing I need to clarify before moving forward with this project is the polycount. In the FMP proposal I specified that my budget limit was around 80k. I was told by my tutors that I might need more than that and that I could go over a little. However, 5k was definitely not enough, so I started adding hair cards until I was satisfied with the result.

I made some research, but I couldn't find technical specifications of other (similar) characters. So I went back and removed hair cards until I reached my target polycount limit. I wanted to see if the extra hair cards added made a significant difference and whether or not I should keep them.As you can see in the image below, there are several bald spots in the 80k model. I also had to delete the smaller braids in the beard. I tried to cover the base mesh of the fur, but at some point I simply gave up, because I was not happy making this compromise.

I decided that I would hand in both versions. I'm aware that in games performance is more important. However, I put a lot of work into manually placing all those hair cards and the tought of getting rid of half of them breaks my heart.

I rigged the character in 3ds Max using the biped system as I always do. At some point during this semester I tried learning how to rig in Maya, but I think I need a bit more time to adjust to the program before that.
Rigging is always a long and tedious part of a project that I would much rather skip. This time I didn't have much time to spend on the rig. There were issues I didn't have the time, knowledge and patience to solve, so I transformed the model into an editable poly and edited the rest manually. Here are a few different poses to prove that the model was actually rigged.

Last but not least, I went through a lot of different lighting scenarios, backgrounds and different poses in Marmoset. It was quite hard to choose one, but in the end I settled for a basic setup with a main light, a filler, and a few rim lights to make the character stand out from the background.

 After establishing the position of all the light sources I was still not entirely happy with the lighting scenario. However, I couldn't really put my finger on what was bothering me. I then started asking around for feedback, and one of my peers suggested that I should try and give the lights a slightly coloured tint. So I gave the main light sources and fillers a light Cyan tint and a subtle yellow/orange tint to the rim lights. I loved the result - the cold lights helped making the scene look moody as if the character was the middle of a meadow covered in snow.