First Female Mesh - WIP
polycounter lvl 8
Hello polycounters! 
I have spend quite a while working on this one and I finally feel comfortable enough to show it off to 'the big league'.
I'm a level designer by trade and I started doing 3D modeling about 7 months ago - originally because I wanted to complement my skillset with environment art, but I always had quite an interest in character modeling and figured I should give that a spin as well. I kinda got a little stuck on spending most of my time with that *cough*
I have learned quite a bit in this time, but now I have hit a wall in skill. There is only so much in mistakes I can find on my own with this little experience after all.
So now I am looking to you fine people for some feedback on how to improve this lady!
I have spend quite a while working on this one and I finally feel comfortable enough to show it off to 'the big league'.
I'm a level designer by trade and I started doing 3D modeling about 7 months ago - originally because I wanted to complement my skillset with environment art, but I always had quite an interest in character modeling and figured I should give that a spin as well. I kinda got a little stuck on spending most of my time with that *cough*
I have learned quite a bit in this time, but now I have hit a wall in skill. There is only so much in mistakes I can find on my own with this little experience after all.
So now I am looking to you fine people for some feedback on how to improve this lady!
Replies
Anyways, here's what I have gathered thus far (either by myself or as feedback from Artists I know):
- Back of the neck is too thick
- Lower arms are too long (personally I believe I just screwed up the sculpt a bit and the -
upper arms are too short, but I need a third opinion as a tie-breaker on this)
- Hands are rotated wrong for how I sculpted the lower arm muscles
- Toes could use a tiny bit of variety to be less 'in line with each other facing forward'
- Noseridge too long
- Eyes slightly too high (might be result of the nose)
- Chin a bit too manly (was looking mostly at Olivia Wilde for Ref on the face)
- Ears need a bit of work to look less glued-on
- Face appears to be too far forward/jawline is too long
I could really do with some suggestions and maybe a quick liquidify or two to help me out here
I think the arch in her back is too much though.
Slide her elbows towards her wrists. Her forearms definitely wrong.
Ears need much more love.
She seems to be missing hip bones.
Keep going at it.
Hip bones are hard
Back-arch might be a bit too much, ye. Might drag her back out a little bit there. Nobody brought that up yet, thanks. Probably leftover from all the moving-around. Kinda like her breasts are still too big from the original shaping and actually need to be reduced in mass quite a bit.
Ears probably suffered from the head re-sculpting I did. She had a bowling ball for a head before this one. But the ears were actually decent, maybe I can project them onto this one.
I suspected I screwed up the elbow area, instead of the actual arm length (measured it and the overall length seemed to be in line with the normal measures).
Thanks for the feedback. I like gathering it in bulk and see different opinions before I start a rework, so as to not accidentally mess up something that was actually fine before
Generally just feel more free to break stuff right now I see you are keeping a very smooth surface which isn't helpful when building forms and trying to learn, at least for me.
I personally prefer to keep the surface smooth, since I then have an easier time doing the pre-work for sculpting out specific forms. Helps me get more focus on what goes where, kinda. I dislike too much of a clay-sculpt look on my work. Stuff like scars and skin lines are going to be the last thing I will add to her anyways.
Currently digging through a lot of other people's sculpts to get a better idea especially of the hip bone area and the arm muscles. I think I need to work more on getting more subtle details into her, instead of the current 'in the face' stuff I have at times. Could help making her look more feminine.
I finally got around to starting the rework. Not touching the face for now. I think the breasts and ribcage came out quite alright - maybe need some minor changes still. The hips are painful to work out properly, even with a lot of ref. Stupid bones. But I think I am getting there, slowly. Lots of lower-body work tomorrow, I think.
Still hoping for some more helpful advice on this entire venture
Go and buy yourself Scott Eaton's Anatomy for Artists. I can't express how amazing it is in teaching anatomy. It's worth every cent you'll spend on it and you'll be wanting to throw money at Scott. You also need to work on your understanding of forms,silhouettes and basic structure. Grab some books from Richer and Loomis. A good idea is also to visit ten24 website and buy yourself some 3d scans. Great tool to copy, reference, and learn from it. What you need is a focused and thoughtful study, not random sculpts when you don't have any idea what you're doing. Anatomy is the most vicious best to hunt, but when you catch it you will be much better.
Welp, harsh words right there. Some paint-over lines to give it a better overall shape would've been nice to go along with that (I could probably stop making abominable muscle structures, get overall shape and stick it into a suit to hide the rest and call it a minor success and move on to practice more without a 15th rework on the same mesh).
Keep in mind that I am not aspiring to be a character artist. I'm just a poor ol' level designer that has been teaching himself 3D modeling for mostly environment stuff and has taken a bit of a liking to characters and is trying to wrap his head around that. Out of the 7 months I have spend with 3D modeling (aside from that stunt like 10 years ago in WC3 where the models had 200 polygons and we called that pretty) I have spend maybe 3 on characters and anatomy.
I appreciate the suggestions, but before I sink 800 bucks into Scott's course, I'd prefer to at least know WTF I am doing with most of the tools and get a better foundation. I'd rather not waste my money and his time, especially when I don't seriously pursue a career in that discipline
What I am however considering to do is having another go at digital tutors stuff since there's some new pretty good looking character tutorials (as well as some plant stuff I still haven't been able to remotely get my head around). Richer's book as been on my "Buy it already" list for a while. Should probably order it already.
IMO; Push her shoulders in, smooth-destroy some muscle definitions around her abs, lengthen bicep, and fix her arms, and give her hands a relaxed pose, and maybe more defined collar bones.
I smoothed out most of the neck details in the last update because I have to fix the face soonish and the new shoulder pose showed me that the collarbone was all wrong. Not to mention that the shoulders are way too broad as you said
I did some work on the arm proportions already, but from the Ref I think I need to move it a tiny bit more. The wrist is probably too tiny as well.
Will apply your tips later today and see if that helps. Not going to try to define too much at the moment, I think I need to focus more on the overall shape first and get that into a proper line. Ultimately I'll stick her in a suit anyways so spending too much on trying to figure out muscle details and such is going to be a bit pointless, but overall decent form should be helpful with that. Gonna try and get this one to a stage where I can be happy with it and then I'll do some more anatomy study before I tackle the next one. Probably going to do it bodypart by bodypart. And I gotta figure out plants.
Not trying to sound like a dick, but that's kinda irrelevant. You asked for crits and you've received them, saying stuff like that makes it seem like you want people to take it easy on you. If you want to progress its best to take critique like this on the chin and keep working at improving.
http://www.pinterest.com/PyrZern/boards/
Nah, the critique is fine and Ahoburg has the right of it when he says I am a far shot off (albeit a bit harsher). The point of the sentence was more to show that at this stage, spending over 800 on a course is a commitment in money that I feel would be a bit of insanity (half the average monthly income with the other half being eaten by rent already) - ultimately I'll certainly consider it a few months down the line of practice, but I gotta make-do with what is available for now. I do appreciate his suggestions of getting 3d scans however, it's on my shopping list, as well as Richer's Anatomy as soon as possible.
Ohh. Thank you very much. This is going to be so helpful practicing characters/body parts in the future