Sphere - Final

It isn't perfect but here's my sphere. I now have all of the shadows, the reflections, the hot spot, etc. This project was really time consuming because I always messed something up and had to spend time fixing it again. And because I fixed that I messed something else up and it just formed a vicious cycle... The key is to work slowly and in small, carefully planned out increments when it comes to blending colors/shadows on something like a sphere.

Sphere Update 2

Today I tried to perfect the sphere but it seemed like everything I did only ended up making it worse so I had to restart a few times.. The shadow is starting to look better since it is sharper now but there is still the issue of shaping it correctly. Also, the shading for the sphere still looks a bit off. As of now it still looks fairly flat and dull, unlike the reference which looks 3D, shiny, and smooth.

Sphere Update 1

After a few tweaks to the sphere, I've started in on the shadows. So far they look bad but with some more blending, erasing and shaping they should be good. It's difficult to get things the way you want because I tend to either change things too much or not enough.

Sphere

I've just started making this 3D sphere. So far I have the basic shape and general idea of shadow (it helped to use a mask so that I was only able to color within the circle) but there is plenty more work to be done. I still need the ground shadow, ambient shadow, specular highlight, etc, and better blending in general.