Texture Painting - A lesson in modeling and style

So since my last post, I acted on changing up the shapes on the cart, I updated the UVs on the cart, and I began painting the cart.

What I learned from this session was that I really need less uniform strokes and more contrast/saturation. I was watching a tutorial by Tyson Murphy (ArtStation link) @ Udemy (link to tut), and I pretty much tried to loosely follow his technique. I immediately recognize that it doesn't resemble his style, and I don't like my result.

This texture was something that I made during a short break at work. And I already like what I see here. Alot more saturation, more contrast, and clean (ish)! I want to lean more towards this style again.

I also learned a lesson in UVing. How do I prevent stretching in my texture? I've noticed that some artist would separate the edge of the wood (inside grain), so that they could just focus on the largest part of the asst, and have more UV space for the exterior wood. Atleast, thats my observation. I also noticed that some Blizzard artists would create only one side and spread that detail around. So in my next session I will be removing the edge of the planks.

Here are some useful links to the inspiration I had while work on this:

http://jessicadinh.blogspot.com/p/blog-page_18.html
http://fafart.blogspot.com/p/warlords-of-draenor.html

That's it for now!