@ Haha, yeah, I have it on good authority that the blacksmith was using a very rare, very exotic, enchanted Elven Hammer of Passing! 
Thanks man! I think it’s mostly the lighting, I wanted to make sure you could “see” everything about the shields, which led to a fairly complicated lighting setup.
@ Your project looks pretty cool man! Thanks for the interest! As it stands right now, 3 of the 5 will be pretty human-ish, and I’m going to make the last 2 look a bit more like they belong on “enemies,” so to speak. I’ll probably throw in a bunch of paint color variations on the painted shields so people can break up the look in game to some extent as well.