I am an amateur 3d character artist (Hobbyist?) and most of my work has been for mods for games like Neverwinter Nights 1/2, Vampire the Masquerade: Redemption and Bloodlines.

This head was intended as a base for an independent RPG which alas fell through. I decided to get back to it and at least finish it so I can use it for other projects down the road. It is still a work in progress and many of the textures are placeholders/WIP. The hair mesh and texture are not my own (free source, Credit and thanks to 3dregenerator). The rest of the model was polygon modeled from scratch then taken into a sculpting app and used to create a highpoly mesh for normal maps. This represents about 2 months of work (mostly because I am never satisfied and keep redoing things).

Head with textures applied (WIP)

Geometry + normal and specular maps only.

Wireframe view, eyes are high poly at the moment as I have yet to finalize them. Once I have them exactly the way I want them I will bake the normals down onto a much lower poly eye mesh.

ASRock may not have made me a better artist but it certainly provided me with the stability and features I needed to work on projects like this. My previous build (not ASRock) gave me numerous problems with application crashes and BSODs when working with complex materials or high poly sculpting. My current build has not crashed on me once in the 5 months I have been using it and has remained on virtually 24/7 so thanks ASRock for providing me the tools I need to grow as an artist 

I use 3ds max, Zbrush and Photoshop. I plan on learning to animate at some point but haven't found the time. Rigging is a PITA for sure, I spend more time rigging than I do texturing for the most part....