Major Project - "Gold": Hero Retopology and Unwrap

In terms of retopology, I will keep it brief as there isn't much to say, just a list of technical requirements that need to be ticked off in order for the character to be able to be animated. 

I started with the face. I split the head and neck from the rest of the body and capped the neck underneath the armour in order to make for and easier and cleaner retop. I made sure that the deformation loops around the eyes and mouth were properly placed. In terms of workflow, I usually like to get the retop done, and only after everything is in place, clean it properly. Of course, I work as cleanly as possible from the get go, but I don't concentrate specifically on that, but rather on retopping as fast as I can to save time and see the bigger picture. 

I kept the eyebrows separate, as I've seen people usually do for stylized characters. Moreover, if I had tried to retop them into the face, I think it would have ruined the cleanness of the deformation loops around the eyes. So I prefered to keep them separated.  

I added deformation loops around the shoulders, only until where the armour starts, as the metal won't need to deform. I didn't add any on the elbows, as the sleeves are puffed anyway. I did my best to follow the edges and flow of the character's parts (chestplate, the cloth around the waist, shirt, forearms etc.) in order to make it easier for myself to unwrap them. 

For the smallest pieces I used Zremesher to get a base for the retop, then cleaned it and reduced the unnecessary topology.

I had initially added only a few loops onto the cloth hanging down from her waist, but I added more after getting feedback and realizing that in order for the cloth to be animated it would need more topology to move smoothly. 

For the hand retopology, I started with the fingers, keeping the loops going, then worked my way to the wrist. 

For the bow, I used the block-out I first made for the main shape, then Zremeshed the vines and flowers and cleaned the Zremeshed mesh.

When unwrapping, I did my best to straighten out as many of  the UVs as possible and pack them neatly, since there were a lot of elements to the character. I didn't want to use more than 3 UVW sheets (excluding the eyeballs) for the main body and 1 for the bow and arrow.