This is the most recent image - will update - as I go !!! - start of post below !!!
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He/She looks very good. A great Classical Alien.
Well done.
Paul.
Hey there
Fellow citizen 
2 things I would change is the nose or the mouth (or both) It feels like they don’t have any character because the don’t stand out to me. Maybe extend the nose or enlargen the mouth
Otherwise it looks very nice. Keep on truckin’
Looks… freaky :lol:
I like it.
I would enlarge the eyes and make them black and shiny :lol:
And it would look better if you use a skin alpha or something.
Keep walikng…
Thanks for the engouragement guys. Yes Paul in going for a classic grey but adding more texture/character/life to it (with a bit of luck).
Vidwhal, Ive laboured over the mouth and nose, your comments were absolutly right, he was lacking in something - spent a few hours adding some more detail/messing with proportions. Started adding some folds of skin - this sort of stuff I find really difficult to do - Im wondering if anyone knows of a really good method of adding skin. the skin so far is o.k. but is looking really thin and lifeless. would be nice to give it some realism.
Dani_z3, thanks for you comments made the eyes black (classic grey styleee) and stretched the skin around the side of the eyes a little making them look bigger, but keeping them the same scale.
going to move onto skin alphas etc. next.
anyway here is the lastest - thanks guys!!!
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Hey, I really like the muscles in the back of the neck, going to the cranium, near the jaw. And the skin skin over the muscles looks quite nice. How are you currently adding the skin folds? Maybe with your process detailed, a different, faster way can be found.
I definitely like it 
My only crit is that I’d want to tighten up some of the lines near the nose-to-jaw flesh bridge (hell if I know what that’s called) so that it has harder lines that are more creaselike. But that might not be what you’re going for there, and if not, that’s perfectly fine, it looks nice. I am looking forward to skin detail
Thanks kzerza, yeah still not 100% happy with the nose to jaw flesh bridge (will find out the anatomical name). im going to further twaek the mesh today and start some texturing.
I added the skin folds by using the inflate brush, then smoothing out where the folds meet other larger muscles. it is a very laboured process, and it taking too long. I would prefer a method that is more spontanoues and less laboured.
deco brush and smooth, wash rinse and repeat.
Cool, thanks warpy - yeah re-discovered the deco brush, made some alpha brushes and working into it now
result so far - still a way to go.
Another question about the deco brush - how do I prevent it from jumping. I seem to get the stroke sorted in projection master, but when I release the brush it seems to ‘jump’ giving a different result.
Yeah, the deco brush is the way to go.
What do you mean by “jump?” Do you mean that when you pick up your mesh, it changes the detail you added? That’s a mesh resolution vs. distance from mesh issue, if that’s the problem. Just back out from the mesh and try again. Or is the brush actually jerking over to the side when you stop drawing it? If that’s the case, I have no idea at all.
On the current render, I really like the alphas! I think he’d look really cool with some highly visible head-veins, to really drive home that gangly, sickly look that type of alien is known for. With some more deco brushing to really drive home those wrinkles, and a vibrant color map, you should have something really nice 
Yeah with the deco brush its, the latter problem. tbh though Ive sort of gotten used to it. It does mean that you have to be a lot more spontaneus with your mark making though. thanks for your response btw kzerza.
Anyway started the nitty gritty detail. Ive added an ambient occlusion map baked out from maya from one of the high res meshes and used that a a base for the final texture. adding this really helped me with the detailing stage of the image.
Also added a noise texture and using it as a mask inflated details from that over the top.
now Im getting a bit closer to the end though I feel that the face needs a bit more tweaking on a lower division layer. not 100% happy with some of the basic forms, I would be worried but this is one of zbrushes greatest strenghs, the way you can bounce backwards and forwards between lo and hi details.
Anyway here is the image.
[attach=51448]greyv5.jpg[/attach]
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Oh if you interested here are the alphas I used to create the skin details.
alien_skin_cover_wrinkles seemed to be the most effective alpha in the process.
next stop is some colour - this grey wont be grey much longer
Great work and great alphas too. Keep up the job
Could you make the eyes shiny please???
Hey, that’s really great The area above the eye socket came together really nicely, as did the neck. Thanks for the alphas, downloaded and saved
Thanks for the kind words guys, here is the first colour iteration (with shiny eyes).
Need to add a lot more subtle hues to the texture for the alien, then I will probably take it over to Maya and set up some proper shading networks with sub-sur-scattering and the like !.
I will be posting up some more alphas as I make them in the near future.
abductee?
i’m a big fan of aliens. i like your version. but since it is a ‘grey’ alien…i think you should tone down the blue-ish tint.
awesome! The shiny eyes give it a classic alien feel
Yeah, agreed a bit too blueish in tint - playing around with the overall colour atm. need to come up with a texture thats detailed enough in itself, but doesnt clash with the overall geometry detailing.
Thanks for the input skinnybonez.
Actually, getting abducted could be useful, I could get some half decent reference then :lol: .
Here is the latest - desaturated and added some zmapper cavitymap details. done a bit of post processing aswell. starting to get quite pleased with it 
:o Forgot the eye shine this time Slayir - will add this maya end with some cubic relection map.
btw ive read a few posts here and there about rendering normal maps in mental ray for maya. have tried it a few times but not had any joy. So I was wondering if anyone could point me in the right direction of a decent tutorial explaining how to set up/render normal maps correctly. If this fails I guess I could do some grabs from Maya in high quality mode, but its not the same though