I AM GROOT #2
I made this sculpt after watching Guardians of the Galaxy. I have a huge amount of respect for the original creators of Groot, he looks so awesome in the movies! This is the best I could do, yet it still doesn't look anywhere close to as good as the one in the movie. It took me 14 hours to finish.
Final result
Stage #1: Defining general basic shape
Stage #2: Simple sketching, not adding too much detail yet
Stage #3: Defining more smaller details
Stage #4: Smoothing and defining more facial features
Stage #5: Adding finer details
Stage #6: Adding final details
First render test, very bad lighting
Playing around a bit with lighting from above and from the sides
In this test render I added some extra darker edges to the model using materials
Made colors a bit less vibrant to make it look more like actual wood
Changed the colors again, experimenting a bit with DOF as well
Final result, improved moss on top of the model, and the wood is a bit brighter again.