Hey there,
decided to push my sculpting/character skills a bit by declaring this years july as FACEMONTH!
I'll sculpt a face a day, each roughly around an hour and try to keep this thread up to date!
Critique is always welcome - after all, I do this in order to get better!
I'll start of with the first 3!
Replies
It looks like you are not quite fast enough to get a complete study with these tho, cause besides the female they are looking pretty blobby.
So my only bit of advice is, spend a bit more time. Do each one in 2-3 hours instead, if these are all an hour and tighten up the forms. There are so many subtle things that go into makeing a great looking face, that I think you are completely missing that if you rush.
I know what you mean and you're shure right, that the sculpts would benefit from a bit more time.
I have a couple of reasons to keep them that short thou...
Mainly what I hope to improve with this exercise is the skill to create strong characters and I feel that the most important portion of this is the rough development in the first hour (or so). I now detail and finetuning shapes also adds to character, but this tends to consume way too much time for the effect and after all I'm trying to produce mass here, to get a good routine - in the overall process of characterdesign as well as in speed-/concept-sculpting.
At last one more reason is just that I do this in my lunchbreaks and I could not bring up the energy to spent this much time on private work every day over a month.
Of course every third day or so would still be great exercise but I hope you know what I meant, I'm trying to put in some mileage here, rather than creating portfolio ready peaces.
looking forward to seeing your improvement over the next month.
the kid's my favorite so far;)
Even though i agree somewhat that the first hour is important as far as character faces are concerned, the hours that follow arent any less important either.
I just think you would improve more if you actually spend time on your sculpts. Case in point. You are to paint a painting of an apple. Would you improve more if you actually tried making an apple or would you improve more if you just made large strokes without any refinement. Ofcourse if you are confident enough in your abilities as a painter/sculptor having the basic fundamental technicalities down to point, sure, you should be ok with just putting down values and moving on.
Likewise, until and unless you actually spend time learning about the underlying anatomy and facial planes i personally think making hourly sculpts isnt going to help you improve much. Sculpts go through phases of development such as laying down proportions or refinement or facial planes or details. I think you should focus on all of them. Many veterans would have problems making a sculpt in an hour i believe.
Or you could start with a basemesh that you could use with every sculpt *but that would change the goals i believe*
Thats just my opinion hope i got it across to each his own though.
Good luck!
Thanks butt_sahib, I now some of your work and it is very solid, so your critique is important to me. But let me maybe put it that way:
I don't think what you or BradMyers say is wrong, I'ts just not what I aim at with this exercise.
Of course you could never become a great sculptor with only speedsculpts, but I've done the mistake in the past and put way too much time in work that was not worth it. I focussed on detail without the knowledge of those anatomical and artistic fundamentals you talk about.
I had a piece in my portfolio up until recently that was one of my first sculpts because I spent about 8 hours or more on it and it was rendered nice, lit well and the overall picture would have looked great if not the anatomy, planes of the face and those basics would have been completely wrong!
So this is what I want to achieve: Get better at building up the ground shapes; get quicker in that; bringing to live strong characterization in the facial features and build up better knowledge of the planes of the face and face anatomy
Of course after this month I will do other pieces again and focus on other things then.
Fantastic work. I think you are absolutely on the right track. I can already see improvements with these sculpts. I really like their expressions and unique features. Any one of them could be developed into great character.
Cheers.
I feel I'm still struggeling with the eyes now and I thougt the general proportions and base of the head would come easier by now - but every hour is still a struggle...
This is great motivation thou, thanks!
Kicking them out like its nothing. They all convey a lot of character so
as 4bin said allready you should have no problem to chose one and take him further someday, if you so desire.
Great job!
Thanks everyone for the comments!