Sun Wukong Girl

Denzule

Hey everyone, I'm a student learning zbrush for the first time and for my first project I've decided to attempt to create Toshiaki Takayama's take on the Monkey King.


Based off the reference I'm going for a semi-realistic anime style, leaning more towards anime. I already made my first mistake which was modelling the head, and hands separate from the body and retopo'ing all of them. Luckily this was easy to fix in Maya where I just joined the meshes together.

Here's what I got for the base, let me know if there's anything wrong with proportions, anatomy etc. I believe in jumping into the deep end so give me your harshest critiques, I can take it.

snoop

I made a really quick and dirty edit with the liquify filter in photoshop.

As I've written on the image, ignore the arms, I didn't bother controlling what the liquify brush did to them, because they're already correct proportionally, other than a slight widening of the shoulders. Now, my edit isn't necessarily better than what you've got. I just feel that it's more in line with the reference photo in your post, and the upper torso comprised of the top of the abdominals, ribs, and up all the way to her shoulders seems too thin. Your model seems far more petite than the girl in the reference in this way, along with the fact that she has thicker/wider thighs and hips. The hip to waste ratio isn't quite so vast either. The changes I made aren't entirely significant, but not so insignificant that I feel they could be described as being subtle. 

You've got a really good start so far, and my suggestion is based on my perception of the reference and a bit of my own preference when it comes to what I deem to be a realistic figure (quite often when people try to make women seem more sexy, they make the upper torso thinner and the hip to waist ratio is larger because of this; often times the extent of this exaggeration starts to interfere with how realistic the body of the woman appears to me, and it makes them look like some sort of idealized doll... what's more, this happens very regularly when it comes to anime girl drawings and models). What you have right now in terms of proportion is good enough on its own that, if you like the look of what you already have more than the look of my edit, then I don't think your model will be all the worse off for it.

lkameen3

I cant wait to see this come together! A few things stand out right away to me looking at my anatomy model, her rib cage isnt defined enough, it looks like its missing part of the bottom.  Her legs do seem a bit fuller in the reference than you have it and it looks like as you come down to the knee you lose some muscle mass. her trapezius needs to get redone as well, its much too triangular.  Excited for this though!

Denzule

@snoop It's a little hard to see from your image as it looks like a slightly zoomed in version of the original, but I understand what you're saying. The reference's body feels like a rectangle that then balloons out to the legs, so I might have been subconsciously trying to achieve this effect by making the waist smaller. I'll try to widen the hips and thighs instead and fix the torso.

@lkameen3 Thanks! I'll fix the legs, but I'm not sure what you mean by 'too triangular' for the traps. If you're talking about the angle I'll see if I can tone it down so it inserts lower on the neck.

Also currently playing around with a few ideas for methods to create the clothing on top using either Maya or zBrush.

snoop

Both of those images are the same size, I didn't zoom in any. I mostly widened her waist and mid to upper torso, and made her rib cage a little bit longer/taller, and made her thighs and to a degree, her hips somewhat wider. If you copy the image on the left and center it over the image on the right, and reduce the opacity to about 30-50%, you ought to be able to see more clearly what I did. 

Like I said, the changes I made are fairly subtle, and your model is really good as it is it; the small changes I made just make her body seem a little less stylized.

lkameen3

@Denzule the trapezius in the reference and many anime style girls plateau into the neck rather than slope up into it, thats what I meant by its trianglular.  Even on human anatomy it doesnt slope up that sharply

Denzule

Slight anatomy fixes, I also tried to thicken the hips and thighs to better align with the reference.

pior

As far as proportions are concerned I think your first screenshot was the most accurate to the illustration. Of course the catch is that it is a very idealized illustration with some body proportions that might not really translate naturally in 3d ... but that's part of the challenge isn't it

All that being said, Zbrush is notoriously deceiving when it comes to judging subtle proportions adjustments. I won't go over all the reasons as to why as they are multiple, but my advice would be for you to very often export out a decimated version of your model to check it thoroughly in Max/Maya under a natural perspective - at least twice a day. This will be invaluable.

As a matter of fact I would also recommend you to take a break from sculpting at this time in order to prepare a rough yet functional rig that would allow you to check your character in a posed state every step of the way from there on. This will save you days or even weeks of adjustments later.

Good luck.

f1ey

more love for arms, and legs has strange proportions 

Denzule

@pior Hmm...I would've thought that orthographic views would provide an accurate representation of the proportions, but it is a little difficult to judge from the pose the reference is in. I guess this is why you suggested I pose the mesh.

@f1ey Yep, I see it. I was messing around with proportions and forgot the adjust the position of the knees to accommodate the change.

Denzule

Added in primitives for clothes. I'm not really sure I like how the hair is at the moment but it'll do until I finish the rest of the outfit. I had to raise the arms a bit to fit the sleeves in.

Denzule

Worked a little more on the clothes and armor. The Chinese knot was incredibly difficult but I like how it turned out in the end.

Denzule

Mostly done with everything. Threw a quick and dirty polypaint on it to see how it all looks together.





All that's left is to figure out how to make the twintails look appealing as right now it looks like a bundle of worms. Also thinking about tweaking the face so that the eyeballs can be more eyeball sized, since right now they're massive just to properly fit that anime face. I've been looking at those Dollfie Dream heads to see how they do it, but it's a little hard to visualise. All my attempts at the beginning resulted in some really weird faces.

After that is figuring out how to retopo the sculpt then UV it and send to Substance Painter. I'm not sure if I"ll be able to get the same level of detail for the patterns since I've had problems in previous projects maintaining clean edges in Substance but we'll see how it turns out.

Denzule

Oops, also need to add the large ribbons on her back and that big staff.

Denzule

Quick update.

Added the ribbons, made the eyeballs smaller and tweaked the face to accommodate them. Also fixed the hair.

Texelion

Looks good. But there are two things I find weird  : 

First, that angle between the thighs and armor, makes the leg seem broken ^^ : 



And second, there seem to be small cavities in the face, it's not smooth : 

You should try to smooth that out on a lower subdiv, or use the inflate brush with a really low value to make the surface even.

Other than that it's really good for a first time. Are you following Jon's tutorial ?

http://www.hazardousarts.com/Miku_Tutorial.pdf

Denzule

@Texelion Oh wow, don't know why I didn't see that bend with the leg. I think it's because there's no enough mass on the thigh nearer the knee compared to nearer the waist. I'll fix that.

I was following Sakaki Kaoru's process before I found Jon's tutorial while looking for a solution for the hair. It was really helpful for that.