Texturing of weaponry

I have just been given some models of spears and shields that the Masai will hold.  I was initially going to apply a black solid colour to the weapons; but it was suggested to me (I can't remember who by) that I experiment with different levels of shade.

Instead of a Solid Colour shader, I applied a toon shader called a Light Angle Two Tone.  This meant that the level of colour that was present in the scene would be dependent on how much light is in the scene.

I went for a mixture of brown and black.  As this could only work with lighting in the scene, I applied a Directional light.

To test this, I key framed the directional light at frame 25 and I then rotated the light in the opposite direction.

At first the light was rotating in a vertical movement, which did not look like a sunset movement, so I simply added an inbetween keyframe at frame 13 to make the directional light rotate in a more horizontal movement, creating the illusion of a sun setting.