I'd like to get... A "head"...
polycounter lvl 13
Had an epiphany earlier this year. I'm waaaaaay to slow at sculpting heads. Need to get faster and more efficient.
So every morning this summer Im waking up and between the hours of 10 and 12, I'm sculpting a head every day... well mon-fri at least. Im not sure what I'll do for the weekends, maybe take the best head or two of the week and polish them up a bit.
I'm hoping the 2 hour time limit pushes me to work out the basic forms and correctly place things faster and more efficiently, so that by the end of the summer I can knock the time down to an hour or less.
Base Head:
Every head will use the same base head, which I built a few months back and have tweaked here and there. When I finish I session I will drop down to level one and export the base head, which will feeds my second goal. A libray of decent heads, bases and sculpts.
Do chime in if you notice Im doing stupid mistakes repeatedly. Or just have general crit. I've gotten good feedback about the eyes which I'm trying to resolve.
So here's week one
Mon:
Tues:
Wens:
Thurs:
Fri:
What I've learned from Week One:
I'm feeling more confident. So that's a plus but I need to pull up more ref for my eyes and noses. Proportionally everything works ok I think but the heads all feel very samey. Need to push my proportions more and exaggerate some features here and there for personality...
Also I need to work on all areas at once, I've had a tendency to neglect the ears (at least earlier in the week) till it's too late to really sort them out.
So every morning this summer Im waking up and between the hours of 10 and 12, I'm sculpting a head every day... well mon-fri at least. Im not sure what I'll do for the weekends, maybe take the best head or two of the week and polish them up a bit.
I'm hoping the 2 hour time limit pushes me to work out the basic forms and correctly place things faster and more efficiently, so that by the end of the summer I can knock the time down to an hour or less.
Base Head:
Every head will use the same base head, which I built a few months back and have tweaked here and there. When I finish I session I will drop down to level one and export the base head, which will feeds my second goal. A libray of decent heads, bases and sculpts.
Do chime in if you notice Im doing stupid mistakes repeatedly. Or just have general crit. I've gotten good feedback about the eyes which I'm trying to resolve.
So here's week one
Mon:
Tues:
Wens:
Thurs:
Fri:
What I've learned from Week One:
I'm feeling more confident. So that's a plus but I need to pull up more ref for my eyes and noses. Proportionally everything works ok I think but the heads all feel very samey. Need to push my proportions more and exaggerate some features here and there for personality...
Also I need to work on all areas at once, I've had a tendency to neglect the ears (at least earlier in the week) till it's too late to really sort them out.
Replies
For today I tried to get a likeness of Peter Stormare as he appeared in Constantine (as Lucifer). 2 hours as usual.
^_^
Really challenge yourself though.
Make a black guy, asian girl, and a child sometime soon.
Im actually hoping to try and do a lady tomorrow and start mixing it up ethnically later this week.
That's great.....but lets try keep it on the subject of 3D shall we? :poly122:
Seriously though these are coming along sweet. I agree, definitely try mix it up a bit, you're already off to a great start!
keep it going
either that or push your base mesh enough that it is no longer recognizable.
right now i can see a resemblance of your original base mesh in each and every sculpt you posted so far.
also, focus on face planes (google it!) and do individual lips, nose, eyes, ears studies.
I'm definately going to diversify more as I go. Thanks
crazyfool- Thanks, and you're right about the lighting thing. Makes it a real pain in the ass. I usually have some type of human reference open. but I would like to try to get more likeness, like the peter stormare one I tried.
MM- I'll start pushing my base harder. I don't want these to all look like they're related. I'll start working more face plane knowledge into this too. Thanks!
Tried an asian of the female persuasion, and it's not quite there. Granted the tomboy haircut probably doesnt help... Might try a black guy tomorrow.
Try sculpting this once:
Neox- Thanks and I agree that I shouldn't use the base for ALL of them this summer (maybe do a weeks worth from a sphere), but I would like to use it as much as I can, unless it's just a terrible base in which case I'd try to fix it up some.
I'm hesitant to just start completely from scratch every time because normally thats more or less what i already do (I use zspheres though or just a regular sphere, don't have dynamesh) and I'm trying to move away from that and just try something different.
I don't feel like I'm looking for shortcuts really just trying to find a better/faster/efficient way for me personally. I understand that it might take the whole summer, but hey that's what I cool with that.
He started facial sculpting off by doing a rough skullshape, adding muscle mass and then finally fleshing out the face with the skin.
You probably should give that kind of approach a chance as well.
Here is an example: Under that muscle is a sculpted skull (shape not detail), followed by muscle. The next step would be skin. The 3 step process is supposed to help reinforce realistic face sculpting.
haha, wow.
I'd just get some nice reference pics and really take some time to observe what is actually going on. Be thoughtful and honest about what you are doing. Don't rip through the process trying to do the thing as quick as possible. Then when you're done, again honestly evaluate what is wrong with your model. If you are being honest you'll see how deficient your model is. As a character artist you should engender an almost neurotic level of self-criticism towards your art.
Simply laying muscles on a skull mimicking what you see someone else do is kinda pointless. If you are going to do it, execute it perfectly or don't do it at all.
mykahli- I'm assuming that's aimed at Dataday?
Put more work into this planar study. Noticing how far off my noses were. HA! Hindsight.
Will continue tomorrow
I dont quite understand your "mimicking what you see someone else do" comment. Understanding anatomy and building a foundation around muscle mass and bone structure is NEVER pointless, nor is it mere mimicry, no more so than telling someone to observe is mimicry.
The picture I posted by the way is just an example of one type of facial practice some schools, and what I personally was shown in the past by the author of a book about human anatomy within zbrush.
I also dont quite understand your "execute it perfectly or dont do it at all" comment. Seems like odd advice for the OP with a highly subjective nature.
Small bit of progress on this:
red line shows how similar all of these heads are.
try to make your face plane study more generic like so that you understand the anatomy better. then start working on different races and genders.
example of a more generic version:
http://philippefaraut.com/store/reference-casts/planes-of-the-face.html
after that try pushing/pulling the jaw width, location of the eyes, placement of nose, lips etc. modify bigger proportions as well as smaller details.