Sword and Shield Prop

I've set myself a target to create a game prop piece or generally small CG model every 1-2 weeks. Its definitely a challenge as I'm working full time during the day and only have a few evenings free a week.

With this prop I set myself an extra little task: to waste as little UV space as possible. This should always be a priority but I really wanted to nail it. Getting textures to look good at 1024 x 1024 is my main task. A small polygon budget is also something I'm aiming for.

Here is my result rendered with a map resolution of 4096 x 4096 (Large I know but I really wanted something to compare lower map renders to.) I'll update with more images, including lower resolution maps tomorrow morning. Final Polygon count for both Shield and Sword was 960 tris.