Game Modeling - 36 hour Art Test

On Wednesday morning, our class received instructions and specifications on a practice art test.  We were to choose one of two provided concepts to model.  Our limit was 5000 tris, our maps 1024 x 1024, and we were to generate both Normal and Ambient Occlusion.

I learned a lot about normal mapping and baking maps in this assignment as well as beveling edges.  I still have a lot to learn, but I definitely want to get up to speed on baking Ambient Occlusion.  For some reason all my floating geometry generated black in the map as seen in the bottom left of the picture above.  Hopefully Mr. Gardener will have some insight to this problem as well as feedback on this piece.