The Horseless Headless Horsemann's Headtaker Part 1

 After looking through examples of stylised realism, and also carrying out the gunpowder barrel test, I concluded that I needed to reach further into the realm of stylised models in order for the realistic looking textures to truely look out of place or as boundry pushing as I intended. To do this, I went back to one of my favourite games growing up; Team Fortress 2. I was initially going to recreate the pyro's standard fire axe, but I felt that the shape may be a similar situation to the gunpowder barrel, in which it can look both stylised and realistic because of the shape of the model itself being quite simple.

Team Fortress 2 (2007 - Valve)

Because of this, I decided to create the axe used by the halloween boss creature known as The Horseless Headless Horsemann.

The axe is swung by the boss in the game during halloween events, in which both teams must come together to take him down to get a piece of haunted scrap metal. If a player chooses, they can get their own Headtaker using the in game crafting system and combine the haunted scrap metal with an axe for the Demoman.

I feel like this would be a great test for realistic versus stylised textures, as the shape of the axe head is so peculiar it would be severely impractical in real life so I feel would just look out of place with realistic looking textures. Painting this by hand has been fun, as I've tried to keep the same style as Team Fortress does, and incorporate a bit of my own style in places too.