Christian Bale Character -- Constructive Criticism

manilamerc

Hey guys I'm new to Polycount. If you guy could tell me any anatomy mistakes or anything I should add to make this sculpt look better that would be great.

Program: Zbrush

It's supposed to be Christian Bale

eazy

sup man! he's looking pretty great so far, but the two areas that stand out as needing the most attention are his arms and his nose.

For the arms look at the size of his hands, the volumes at the wrist and elbow transitions, and try rotating the hands to a more natural angle.

The nose feels really narrow and pointy.

Some other areas that could use some work: the wrinkles could be toned down a notch, and the edges on the fabric could be sharpened up a bit. Maybe make the shirt to pant transition a bit more well defined?

Keep it up!

manilamerc

Here is an update tell me what you think now

SuperFranky

he looks like completely different person, not Bale at all

Snader

It looks like a mishmash of Bale and the Joker. I see where you're going for but it's not quite working. Summarized in one word, he looks too sharp. His lips have very straight edges, his chin is too pointy, and his nose is too narrow.

D4V1DC

Hi,

1. Based on this image I see that his chin is round your 3d model has a squarish chin.

2. his nose in the reference appears to have a strong bridge (could be the lighting) your nose perfectly straight.

3. He looks like he's pouting, try relaxing the corners of the mouth, as always make a backup before making changes and testing what works and what doesn't. Just a heads up.

Best of luck and keep going.

North

folds are a little 'globby' and the shirt could use some more thickness around the collar. Overall I would study how cloth falls on the body and fix your creases from looking a little unnatural

Psyk0

His forearm is too long compared to bicep length, they should be roughly the same, bring down the elbow so it lines up with bottom of ribcage/navel.

Work on the arm's anatomy and give the wrists some mass, they are too thin.

manilamerc

Here is an update. I only changed the face the body proportions. Tell me what you guys think now

manilamerc

here is another update

dpaynter26

his clothes are really wrinkled and have no air in them, they look like a sucked up space bag

Steve Schulze

He could certainly use an iron.

Bale is a tricky one because he tends to change his bodyweight and musculature considerably for different roles which will mean that photo references on Google won't necessarily match very well. I think that might be what's causing problems with the face at the moment. I think the front is not too far off, but it needs some work from the side.

This shot here gives a pretty good sense of the shape of his face in profile.

almighty_gir

i think you're matching face references and shapes in the front and side viewports, which is why in the front and sides the landmarks are all there, but you haven't worked very much from any other angle, which is why it all falls apart when you move out of front/side.

manilamerc

Here is another update, I tried lessening the wrinkles and worked on the face

Add3r

Its definitely making progress! And I really appreciate how you are taking the crits as well The upper cheeks feel lumpy and his feet are rather large, its coming along. The wrinkles are a tad over the top as well. Try to first create the wrinkles where the clothing bunches up at the seems and stretches and pinches across his body frame. And then you can start adding the natural hanging creases and folds. The clothing looks great aside from that though. and his arms are JUST a tad long the more i look at the side view. I still think his forearm like said above should be shortened juuuusssttttt a tad bit. Its something you are going to have to play with though to get right. Keep it coming man. The progress is awesome. Its actually starting to resemble Bale for sure

manilamerc

thank you Ass3r glad to hear much of the constructive criticism

manilamerc

where does it feel to wrinkled the shirt or pants?

bugo

I will let people say stuff about anatomy, I will mainly focus on what I think you could do about the folds:

1- Find Fold reference, it's important to try looking at what the real does and not what you think it should do. At least for the first tries.
2- It's very blobby and inconsistent, you could try using more the clay brush to help you out.
3 - Look into some tutorials on how to do folding.

Tits

I would still say wait too much wrinkes on the fold.
Fold get created for a reason and on yours its just going everywhere without real reason ( tension or gravity etc)
It give the impression that the shirt has nothing under it because its pushing inside too much in certain area too. Do you have a full body under your shirt to prevent that?
Other then that nice job, tho there is a little something bugging me about that mouth

manilamerc

Another update, I worked on the folds and mouth tell me what I should fix
PLZ and THANKYOU

manilamerc

Common People I need your crits... keep em coming....

yannage

Not a fold expert, but it seems to be a lot of wrinkles where the back of his knee is.

Keep up the work, you can see the progress through the pictures.

Notes

I think you should define the planes of his a bit more...his face looks kind of 'muddy' right now. Try to lay in the planes first using this as an example
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=76733

try to find some more pics of him with heavy shadows then try to match your sculpt to the planes on his face. The shadows will tell you where the planes are on his face...

barnesy

Looking good so far, I sculpted him myself not too long ago.

One thing that is sticking out at the moment is the jaw line and the jaw mass,at the moment it seems to go beyond the ear and kind of wobbly.

It is a pain trying to reference him as he never seems to stay the same size lol

mr gelmir

I can't comment on the face, as I don't know that much about anatomy, but what catches my attention, is that your folds are all kind of exaggerated. I don't think pants fold like that, especially at the back of the knee and just above the feet. You also might look up some reference for the tucked in shirt.

good luck!

quick search:
http://www.bestindress.com/5719-24915-thickbox/shirt-man-r6c16ls-1s.jpg
http://www.designerjeansonsale.net/upfile/2011120114345820058.jpg

manilamerc

I feel you bro he's a tricky one

manilamerc

Here is an update, I worked on the face a bit but did more on the clothing. I changed the tuck in folds I looked too unnatural before.

romanlionz

i still feel as though there are a lot more folds on his pants than need to be, particularly around the knee area. maybe you are going for that look, but it feels unnatural right now... almost like hes wearing tinfoil pants.

as far as the face goes, its getting closer to looking normal, but i feel like maybe you missed some of the "christian bale"-ness to it. id recommend looking at charicatures, as usually you want to exaggurate some of the iconic features a tad in order for it to read as being bale



i think you can get a lot fromm the expression in the eyebrows - closer together, with those wrinkles in the forehead, and with the shape of the upper lip - definitely giving it some more plumpness on the arches.



from profile also, his jawline looks a bit off - most of the recognition of a particular person comes from the shape of the head, the silhouette - nail that, and the rest of the features should fall in to place easily. keep up the progress! cant wait to see the finished piece

manilamerc

Here is another update worked mostly on the head, and some of the pants. This will be my last update here so I can move on to retopo

Ged

It does have some likeness but looks unnatural, in the front view his head looks squashed in from the sides. In the side view the way his neck joins his jaw looks wierd and his skull is just an odd shape judging by the placement of his ear, his eyesocket is a little deep and his nose doesnt seem to join his cheeks quite right. check this out for ref and remember the camera is not perfectly side on here either but its good to check.

manilamerc

Is this guy's arms too short?

What should I do?

Tits

I don't think they are too short but i might be wrong

manilamerc

common people anything else wrong with his proportions?

chrisundrum

Some of the best reference you can get!

http://onesixthrepublic.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2012-09-04T20:15:00-07:00&max-results=7&start=1&by-date=false

BradMyers82

shoulders should be down a bit and back a little to give a more natural placement. Also, the gap in the under arm is too much, and it almost makes his shoulders appear dislocated. The bone structure of the hips looks slightly off, and the hands are too big. Imagine if he were to place his hand on his face, he could palm his entire head currently. That said, I think his head should be slightly bigger as well. The arms could infact be a tad longer, so when you make the hands smaller, the fingers would reach mid thigh when full extended down. Ged gives very solid advice there. The biggest issue with the face is the fact that he appears to have all the features pinched from the front. You need to work on the 3 quarters view and push the volume in those areas as much as possible. Getting a likeness such as this is probably one of the most difficult tasks you can take on, so keep working hard on this as it will take a lot of time to really nail it. Good luck!

manilamerc

Ok here is the final version of what I have right now, I made the hand smaller lowered the shoulders tried to fix up the hip anything else wrong here?

BradMyers82

I would bring his ass up and his crotch a bit down. Also, still make the arms a tad longer. His face still looks very pinched and you have a lot of areas that look too sharp like you went overboard with the pinch brush or don't have enough sub division levels or both. The lips are one of the key areas I am talking about specifically. Something is wrong with the ears from the front perspective as well.
You are doing a great job with this but I think you are moving too quickly with this. I would recommend that you keep evaluating this yourself over and over again before you re-post progress. The changes you have made have certainly made him look better, but you need to get more aggressive with fixing things and experiment on your own before asking for feedback. Just my 2 cents keep up the good work.

BradMyers82

btw, 3 quarters view is looking much better now, but it still needs work especially from the front. Well done.

garriola83

It seems like a good start, but your overall bone structure and face musculature is looking really not defining mass. Sure, he's a skinny guy, but there are still consistencies when it comes to the head. For example, the forehead needs to be flatter, and find the plane change that's found on the top of the arch of the brow. The chin needs more mass; there's a "ball" there that your model is lacking, and there should be a mass surrounding the corners of the mouth as well. His zygomatic process could use more modeling, and really refine that eye shape more. Philtrum is a bit over pronounced and too rectangular. The transition from the inside corner of the eye to the nose to the cheek needs work.

The body needs to those natural curves that it does to balance itself out when the body is standing. Especially on the legs, you would see some curvature on the calf there. And the wrinkling is overdone and somewhat doesn't make sense. The arms seems to curve outward at the front view, making the deltoid mass smaller than it should. You also need to define some sterno-mastoid mass as well, subtly.

I'd say get this on a lower sub-d and work it over more. You need to get a good feel of the larger forms before getting into detail. Look at more references, and get a good feel of the masses that the refs have and what your model is lacking. Good luck.

manilamerc

thanks alot on the feedback I'll try to take everything in. Where exactly is wrinkling overdone and so not make sense? is it just the pants? or the shirt also?

AlanSMitchell

http://www.cinemadb.it/images/jreviews/450_christian-bale9-1328393702.jpg

So cheeks I think he needs them. It's really interesting to see how sometimes his cheeks seem to disappear. Personally I think you should split the difference like this picture. right now as is you nailed the cheek bone but there is no mass for the cheek muscles? The chin is really bugging me, I'm pretty sure however you made the highpoly I would use a different brush for that area or something. Lower lip should be just a bit bigger Z axis. I did a paint over I hope you don't mind.

the more I worked on the paintover the more I relized how close you are to nailing it. I also had the advantage of painting what I thought looked right it prolly would never render this way. Also tone down them forhead wrinkles makes him look older than he is.

garriola83

manilamerc wrote: »

thanks alot on the feedback I'll try to take everything in. Where exactly is wrinkling overdone and so not make sense? is it just the pants? or the shirt also?

The elbow and back of the knee region is noisy in general and the folds are too lumpy and inconsistent. you want contrast when it comes to detail. look at this for example from uncharted 3.

the wrinkling is not overboard and its only on places where there would be movement. also wrinkles and fold are usually straight, diagonals even, i see a lot of circular or swirling wrinkles. try to make them more triangular than sweeping lines that curve. check this thread out for refs
http://www.zbrushcentral.com/showthread.php?104272-Uncharted-2-Character-Artwork
also study the different types of folds depicted in art such as half-locks, inert folds, diaper folds, pipe folds, etc.

look at the negative shapes that are found in the folds. good luck

Munkndrunk00

manilamerc wrote: »

Another update, I worked on the folds and mouth tell me what I should fix
PLZ and THANKYOU

Looking good!, was looking at the pictures at the start and was thinking 'his lips are sticking out too much' but it seems you have fixed it perhaps raise it higher lip just alittle bit inwards

manilamerc

Hey everybody it's been a while, I spent most of my time in the 'Technical Talk' forums. I have been doing quite a lot of texturing here is what I got so far. Tell me what you think

manilamerc

feedback would be nice

manilamerc

anybody out there?

MM

ok, first off you need to stop sculpting right now!

work on your basic anatomy first. work on primary forms. study bridgeman's anatomy book.
its available online for free here:

http://archive.org/details/constructiveanat00briduoft

right now you are at a stage where it is not appropriate or not really constructive to provide specific feedback regarding anatomy or any part of the model. it would just be telling you what to do as opposed to knowing why you are doing it.

you need to get the basics right and that requires study. study the skeleton, study the major muscle groups and then slowly start sculpting facial details, clothing etc.

you can even look at 3d scan websites which are good reference for real anatomy.


also note that you are attempting a likeness of a real person. this requires high level of anatomy knowledge(specially facial anatomy). merely copying reference does not work. you need work on realistic anatomy and copy reference at the same time. right now you are just trying to copy without knowing why.

manilamerc

MM wrote: »

ok, first off you need to stop sculpting right now!

work on your basic anatomy first. work on primary forms. study bridgeman's anatomy book.
its available online for free here:

http://archive.org/details/constructiveanat00briduoft

right now you are at a stage where it is not appropriate or not really constructive to provide specific feedback regarding anatomy or any part of the model. it would just be telling you what to do as opposed to knowing why you are doing it.

you need to get the basics right and that requires study. study the skeleton, study the major muscle groups and then slowly start sculpting facial details, clothing etc.

you can even look at 3d scan websites which are good reference for real anatomy.


also note that you are attempting a likeness of a real person. this requires high level of anatomy knowledge(specially facial anatomy). merely copying reference does not work. you need work on realistic anatomy and copy reference at the same time. right now you are just trying to copy without knowing why.

Wow MM now that's what I call CONSTRUCTIVE Criticism. I wish I came to you before I even posted Christian Bale. I will try reading some books or something. Do you have a portfolio I could look at? I was going through your threads and none of your images load up for me even on different web browsers and the comments on your work seem to be pleasing. I would just like to see some work on who I am taking advice from. You also have a thread of you trying to sell books so I guess you studied your stuff.

I will definitely take advice from you and if there is any good books you would like to recommend me please tell. Thanks a lot

Fuse

Listen to MM, he knows his shit.

AlphaMeow

This is a bit late buuuutttt..... I encourage you to go back and make changes to make this a more solid portfolio piece. (Once your done reading your anatomy books that is.)


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Oh and your elbows could use a lil'lovin.

dirigible

Dang, Alpha. That's a great redline!
But the jpg compression made your writing kinda hard to read
I'd reupload it as a png or something, if you still have the file.