Style Study #1 - League of Legends - TFT - Piltover Hydrant

--- This is my first entry in what I am planning to be a series of various Stylized Style Studies. (say that 5 times fast x-x)
The plan is to create a list of my favorite IP's, research their model creation process as best I can, and do my darnedest to create a fire hydrant that would fit in their world.

--- Why a fire hydrant you ask? Simple, I have had one too many colleagues jokingly say I should make one. "It's an old school flex" they tell me, "it's harder than you think" They tease, suppressing a laugh at my indignation.
Alright then, I say, challenge accepted.
And so my multi Hydrant journey has begun!

--- I decided to start with a League of Legends TFT style asset.
Once again, why?
-One, I wanted some more hand painting practice. (no normal map information just painting)
-Two, Riot is my dream company
-And threeeeee... The simple modeling style did not require me to actually merge the cylinders together. (which is kind of the whole point of doing a hydrant, LOL)
It’s kind of my cheeky response to all those that pushed this particular shape at me. Don't worry though, I will be doing it the 'right' way with beautifully merged clean topology. You will just have to wait and see <3

--- Postmortem.
I am trying not to spend too much time on each asset I create for these studies. This one is an exception as I was trying to pin down my process, how I want to present these studies, and because I kept getting really, really distracted. On that note though, I do have some things I would have liked to improve about the texture work on this model. Specifically the basic hydrant. I do not feel I captured the correct feel of the metal. TFT has a very distinct almost chromatic feel to all their metal materials and I just don't think I pushed mine far enough. I kept getting bogged down on the small up close details and not the overall picture. Looking at it now, it needs brighter sharper highlights on the left side where the light is supposed to be the strongest. That would really help the metal pop! There are a few other small things I would tweak but overall, I am happy with how this turned out. The Jinxed version is my favorite and I think it has fantastic personality and presence (I kind of want to give him a little hopping animation)

----Special shout out to Cody Adams, Tim Curtis, and Zachary Bender for giving me fantastic feedback and encouragement during the texturing process.----