Hobo bodybuilder bust

HardBaller

Hey guys. This is my very first attempt at a character bust. I tried to do it as anatomically correct as possible. And i focused most on the actually muscle build of the bust. I did try to make something of the face as well but that ended up almost more looking like an ape then a human. In an effort to save it a bit i added some hair to it and dubbed him the Hobo Bodybuilder. I really tried to make the eyes as well but after 10x failing i called this bust done for the day and i'll try the eyes again on the next one.

Anyway. Like i said this is my very first bust. I'm actually not that unhappy with it considering it is my first. I know that i did make a cartoon character bust before but this was so different with all the muscles. From here on i'm mainly going to focus on making characters and busts.

Any critique, tips or advise is always very welcome and much appreciated as well.

So lemme know what you guys (and girls) think...

BradMyers82

talk about an oxymoron, lol. You know how expensive it is to be a bodybuilder, you have to eat like every 2 hours. haha.

Anyway, Its just very blobby atm. It looks like something that someone would call stage one out of five stages of starting with a sphere or something. To really illustrate this clearly, perhaps you could find a sculpt on polycount here that you like and try to make the exact same thing. Then you can compare directly and really get a clear indication how far you need to take it.

I think most of your struggle is just lack of experience so keep at it!

Brian "Panda" Choi

I think what will help, and let's just talk about the face just for now, is to sculpt a head that is just planes of the face.

Right now, both with the given matcap (please avoid using the Skin/Sculpey? Mat Cap if you can, it doesn't do a good job of accurately (relatively speaking) display lighting on the sculpt in the ZBrush viewport. Google ZBRush Mat Caps on ZBro or ZBrushCentral for really good looking lambert MatCaps.) and large shape elements and silhouettes of the face, everything feels very mushy. I recommend recreating and studying this: http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=76733. And I'm VERY serious about doing a straight-up copy study sculpt of this so you get a solid understanding of what planes exist on the face. If it does happen, yeah, start getting creative and turning it into something unique, but make sure you hit the planes of the face first before doing a lot of the creative work.

What I felt like was key for me during my early years of figure drawing and anatomy study was breaking down these complex sinews, fat pockets, and bone landmarks to simpler shapes and volumes. This is what the Planes of the Face achieves, breaking down the forms and volumes of the face to simpler forms so that not only does it provide a good template for complex, realistic faces, but for simpler cartoon ones.

HardBaller

Hey guys. First thank you for all the advice. And i totally agree with all points given actually. After reading what you both said i could see the points mentioned myself as well.

I'm going to do both things mentioned. I'll find a model and i'll try to make an exact duplicate of it. See how far i can go copying it. Actually very curious to see that myself as well. And i'll get some better MatCaps. I agree this one looks horrible but it's the only one i had that looked even half descent.

@Jade the one thing i'm wondering though. The John Asaro's Planes model. Usually i'd do something as square as that in Maya to be honest. So would you sugjest to just make that in maya to get a feel of the facial structure or try to recreate it with as little poly as possible in Zbrush?

Thanks for the advice and kind words guys .