lazerus
Very sorry for not responding to you sooner, I didn't see the new posts
In terms of UV mapping it really depends on what you are planning on doing with the model in zbrush, if your going to be using the move tool to flush out forms then UV map it after that, if your planning on going into detail scupting then UV map it before hand. Another tip is to store a morph target of your model in zbrush before you do any subdividing/ scuplting, as that'll retain your model's initial state and therefore avoid distortion when you get to creating displacement and normal maps from your scupt.
When you say tools do you mean tablets? I personally use an intuos 4 which was a big improvement from the bamboo tablet i was using before, however if you're looking for a tablet and you haven't used one before, you're gonna want to start with the bamboo as they're cheap and small enough to get used to easily. However the key to buying a tablet is matching the dimensions of the tablet to the aspect ratio of your screen as that'll avoid clipping of the amount of usable space on the tablet.
And thanks for the paint over, once again i'm really struggling with the design.
Quik
Agreed, a tablet isn't neccessary but is definately a superb help.
Anyway, that was a long response, here's what I was acctually planning on posting, it's not the robot arm, I know that the work on that has trailed off, I've really hit a mental block and nothing seems to work, so in the mean time I've decided to try and practice some aspects of my digital painting, mainly my colour blending. I produced these three swatches in an effort to better my sklls, let me know what you think, thanks.
Colour test swatches -
