WIP - 'Spirit Girl' - Critique wanted

gestoryscht

Hi guys,
this is the first time I post something in this forum for critique. Here are some great artists and I hope you can help me to achieve greater work. Please be as honest as possible. Thanks!

So guys, this is my work so far. I am pretty 'new' to sculpting humans. To be more precise, sculpting human gesture and facial expression. In the past, I sculpted everything into T/A-Pose and in order to improve my skill, I thought it would be a good exercise to take a concept art of a friend of mine and sculpt the character.

http://tinyurl.com/zc7szlf



The cloth is quite good I think and it just need some refinement (the scarf around her hips is a blockout). The position of the fingers are also untouched.
For me is more important, the face. This creepy looking smile and I can't get it any better.
Stage 1, I sculpted a neutral face and added after posing of the head a subtle smile.



Stage 2, a 'full-smile' and it just looks so ~plastic. So unnatural. What is the problem here?




Thanks for your advice!

JHS

Let´s see, it´s good you also noticed its creepiness. Main reason for that is in my eyes the exaggerated face parts: The eyes/eyeballs are huge and standing wide apart, the ears are too low and from this view too much on the back. The line from the jaw follows the ears but it is too much to the back. Laughing/Smiling is extremely transfered by the eyes, when the eyes are staring the smile automatically looks creepy. I´m not sure about the lips but i guess they have to be thinner when the mouth is stretched that wide open. The teeth also supports some kind of none-beauty, because every teeth or the gaps is very contrast rich. I made a quick paintover-gif:

It´s hard to tell what age the character is (the concept link doesn´t work for me). Also a lot depends additionally on the eyebrows, hair.

gestoryscht

Hi,
it seems polycount screwed the link up. I fixed it with a TinyURL. It's the same link in the backend.

To your approach:
First of all thanks for your time! Now it looks far better, but with the downer, the character is now more human. Don't get me wrong, the new version is better but  I want to achieve a more semi-realistic look. As you can see, my version works, but in the wrong manner
I try to change it to fit your version.

JHS

Ok now i see where you want to go. For a stylized version maybe the approach should be to simplify aspects of the face. Like in a cartoon some facial feature simply don´t exist or aren´t that hard modelled in.
For example there is this thread: http://polycount.com/discussion/comment/2517341#Comment_2517341

Even if you don´t want a manga-looking girl, it shows really well the difference to a realistic face. Everything is smoother and the surface is flowing without great breaks. I could imagine this is what you are looking for.

gestoryscht

Great, these tips are a fantastic help for me and I think the new version is already far greater now. Smoothing everything was a great enhancer.
There is still something wrong, but let's see what the other tips will do.