Your torso and abdominal areas look very thick and the arms don't long enough (they should reach the knee if you rotate them downwards. Going by the images that I can actually see (the others seem to be dead links?) its looking like your shoulders are more than 3 heads wide.
I suggest that you find a decent reference and try to match it a bit more. Test your arms by masking the rest of the body off and rotating them; if the fingertips aren't reaching between the midpoint of the thigh and the knee, they're not long enough.
Finally, Elves are typically portrayed as slender (here she looks a bit 'big boned', but it doesn't look intentional?). Whilst you don't have to go hourglass shaped, you should probably define the silhouette of the ribcage more and you could probably afford to squash her hips/butt in a little.
There are many more things but if you net yourself a good reference you'll be able to solve the problems. This one might be a decent start, but obviously, find more of your own:
You don't need to be totally exact or anything (especially since you're making an elf) but some grounding might help.
Thanks for the arm/shoulder suggestion and the picture, I made the arms longer and made the torso a bit narrower. I collected some references for the body last night, but I ran into an error and lost those references. I'll collect more references for the body later to fix her body.
Sorry if my last comment was somewhat misleading, but I was thinking of giving her a tank top, long socks and gloves, ruby earrings and add some fur to the socks and gloves. Got a mood board in the link bellow including some improvements, I didn't get to upload some other improvements and the earrings I've made; the mood board has many things that I felt that was useful for the High Elf, I'm making her in a modern like pinup.
I think you need to drop several subdivisions down. Right now, proportions and forms feel undefined, so it's getting that weird 80's CG look instead of something on its way to being a higher-end production humanoid model.
It happens to a lot of early ZBrush users that they subdivide early to get the details they want, but you have to stay low to make sure you get your larger forms and bigger gestures down before you smooth it all out. Areas like you face lacking proper proportions (nostrils way too big, no planar forms, etc.), and arms needing longer biceps.
Drop your subdivisions down. Let's make sure the lower-res mesh looks good before we commit to any detail work on the body.
This elf is going to have "regular clothing" if I am understanding this correctly?
Thanks for bringing that up, she ended up looking that way because I have a bad habit of smoothing out forms at lower subdivision levels since I was using dynamesh with another model. The workflow ended up being carried over to the subdivision sculpting. I added some improvements to the model and added some earrings, I may touch on the nostrils when I get back to sculpting.
She'll use regular clothes, as in underwear and tank top. The gloves and socks will be different with added fur.
You really need to drop to a lower subdivision again. ZRemesh what you can and nail your bigger forms before continuing with the body at a higher subdivision. Your inner elbow, for example, just has a huge cavity in it.
Alright, I fixed the elbows and got her to a lower resolution. I fixed part of her wrist and added a small curve to it. I'm not worried about the feet, since the Elf will wear something on her foot. I'm checking other parts of her body to see where I could add some definition if needed. Any other suggestions?
I putting the project on hold, because I decided to finish another model I was working on for ages. I don't know if this model may need some improvements in terms of fat and muscular detail, I'm redoing the suit to add better retopology for sculpting. I'll upload a nude version and some references later. Here's Power Girl.
Thanks for your input. But a part of me agree the the breast would look great smaller, while another part of me believe the breast are necessary due to her shoulder blades; so I decided to keep both versions.
My tablet broke, so I may not be able to do much sculpting later on. But I should be able to fix up some of the accessories and add the rope.
I here are some comic references that I was using for my own version of Power Girl. I got some real life references for the body.
For my version of Power Girl, she's supposed to be some what muscular and fat/curvy. The suit is somewhat based off the original (last pic.), with some added muscles in the first two pictures. I may edit her boots with higher heels.
This really isn't GOOD at all, absolutely horrible. You need to study anatomy and proportions. You have at least a couple of more years before your work is to level.
If this was my work I would NEED honesty from my fellow artist.
@Shanteez: No, Mixamo and MakeHuman are nice, but they won't really teach you human anatomy from the ground up as well as traditional figure drawing and anatomy studies.
Prefabs are useful best when you need to skip a huge chunk of a production cycle.
What are you SPECIFICALLY using as reference for the face. I can give suggestions and paintovers on how to fix it, but it'll help a lot more if you had a specific look you were trying to copy.
Also, could you please give us an orthographic, or at least a 3/4 view, character sheet of your whole body? Paintovers may be needed.
And please, please drop your subdivisions. You're committing to bad foundational forms, which just makes your life harder to make large sweeping edits later on. Don't think that this is a possible critique, this will help your workflow.
@ JadeEyePanda it takes years to learn anatomy and proper proportions.
at this stage I focused on understanding workflow...
everything your suggesting to him may be a foreign language at this stage of his growth...
he needs time to learn allot and playing with the programs I suggested will at least illustrate form and hopefully upgrade his expectations of what QUALITY work and topology should look like...
we should stop kidding the new artist into believing that staring at a reference is going to get you great work.
Your mind just has to know landmarks, insertions and volumes in-order to create a realistic or stylized representation...
This is art ,mathematics and science and if your going to be a professional, you must treat it as such.
I replaced the entire model (except for the head) with another body I made. However I'll start with the head and face then move down. The older body had some topology problems.
I had some trouble with the forms earlier (had a thought that heavily defined forms were too exaggerated and figured they weren't), and I'm currently getting a better grasps of how the forms are done. All I do is use dam standard, pinch, move and sometimes the clay buildup for the lower poly form, before I subdivide the mesh. I'll switch between both the lower res and the higher res.
The face is based off several faces, I'm looking at Britney Spears's eyes for reference (originally her eyes were from another person). The eyes needs some fixing before I can call it done.
I was using Jessica Biel's nose as a reference earlier, and then the nose fell off reference when I wanted to smooth it out. Now I'm making the nose more similar to the original reference.
Her Jaw/facial structure was based off of this pic.
The structure of the back of her head has been loosely based off of this picture, I may adjust the forehead.
You need to not pop back and forth between high and low so early on. Do so once you have your bigger body forms down, but don't subdivide in your initial early stages. It just tempts you to focus on tiny details when it's not going to matter if your low-res is meh.
It's good to hear you're starting sort of over again, but let's make sure your silhouettes and what not are solid before we commit to details.
@JadeEyePanda
:poly122:
Oh alright, earlier I did some work hours before I got that advice. Looks like I'll do both body and face silhouettes before I add anymore details. The temptation always gets to me though.:poly127:
Lower your face subdivisons. We're not going to care about your face painting and details until we can figure out if you're proportionally there to begin with.
I want to see faceting, that's how low we want.
I've attached the first big issue I see. Hopefully this reiterates that it'll be much easier and useful to pop to a lower subdivision to fix these form and proportion issues.
With your skill level right now, you need to choose better references. I think your decision to pick and choose from multiple female faces is destroying the ease of use that is just choosing one person's likeness and imitating that into a sculpt. Just attempt to recreate what God gave birth to already (plus or minus any plastic surgery / photoshop magic). It's too all over he place to pick and choose this woman's lips, and then this woman's eyes, etc.
If you want reference images INSIDE the Zbrush document, Google and search for how to use Spotlight in Zbrush to place images into the document as reference.
Turn off polypaint. We don't care about that right now (we will later), we care about the surface first.
What I think should happen:
1) Block out forms. Stay at low-res, make sure silhouette of the body and face all work. Big general forms of the body and gestures should be there and solid.
2) Subdivide. Work on medium forms. Concentrate on making sure the planes of the face and body are created. The landmark bony definitions are defined on both face and body.
3) Subdivide again. Detail as neceassary, but making sure each step has all the detail one could muster in that particular subdivision.
Also, download John Asaro's planes of the face. This is what we're going to use to nail down your facial forms before you "tempt" yourself to up-res.
I'll check out Spotlight ASAP. This is how low I can go for the topology for now. On the body, structure of Power Girl's body (the new one) is based off of the women at 5'11", with a wider chest of the woman in the second link bellow. The ribcage and torso area is based of the picture in the third link. I made some adjustments for the head and will follow the head shape in the the link you provided, for adding some other minor adjustments to the head/face structure.
Your attempt to pick and choose from several references is understandable, but you're ending up with a Frankenstein of a woman instead of a woman that makes design sense. You need unity to your design, and not this hodge podge of a mess.
You need to find reference of an existing person and stick to that person. Even then, some of the photos you're grabbing are glamour photos for Instagram etc. Realize that people tend to take MANY photos before they choose the best looking one. This is bad for you since that means they're outright lying to you about what they look like "at east." For all you know, they might be sucking and stretching skin artificially.
Please fix the head profile as well (which I hope that's what you meant earlier). I literally gave you an existing head to work from, but it's still horizontally squashed. Just please copy what is already exists in real life. Your back skull is so smashed in, it's a medical problem.
Stop bouncing around everywhere with you references. Find a model, stick to that model.
Good job with finally dropping your subdivisions. Stay here until your forms are proportionally sound.
Parts of the model are looking good, but I'm sorry, those are not what breasts look like in any situation. They literally look like ballons taped to her chest. Before you start sculpting cheese-cakey stuff, you should look at actual references of the female body especially breasts! In your latest sculpt, they are far too big, far too low on her chest, and too far apart. If you feel like you need to give big breasts to a female character to balance out the shoulders, then reduce the shoulders (because they too are too big in the latest sculpt). If you're going to give a female realistic character large breasts they should be realistic breasts, not anime-level tits.
Some additional things; typical female anatomy tells that hip width should be on par with shoulder width. So if a character has wide shoulders they should have wide hips that match the shoulder width, and vis versa. It seems like your characters have very narrow hips, or have hip fat/muscle mass that is too low down (like with the first elf character, her actual hip area is very narrow and instead her upper thighs are very big. that mass on the upper thighs should be on the hips instead, or else the character will appear unbalanced.)
My advise is practice references of realistic female bodies before trying to exaggerate sex appeal. Large exaggerate breasts won't look like realistic breasts until you understand how normal realistic breasts work, ditto with other aspects of the body. Additionally, as already said, work from a single full body reference, with different angles, rather than putting together varying references. Some of the references you've chosen for the recent sculpt are of women pulling very particular poses. Those poses are not what women will look like when relaxed (especially the last post. It's of a woman stretching, and you've tried to incorporate that look into the sculpt, but your character isn't stretching and so it comes out looking very incorrect).
Additionally you're trying to go for a very muscular look, as in the first reference, but only her arms appear muscular. Very muscular women will have much more muscle mass in their pectoral/breast area, so have smaller more muscular looking breasts not pillowy beach balls.
I'd also work on getting your noses down, parts of her face sculpt are looking great (beautiful lips!) but I think it's getting let down by your noses. While the detail is great in them, they're tiny and sharp and thin. Putting more focus on making noses rounded and firm and the right size will help bring those shapes together more!
Your attempt to pick and choose from several references is understandable, but you're ending up with a Frankenstein of a woman instead of a woman that makes design sense. You need unity to your design, and not this hodge podge of a mess.
You need to find reference of an existing person and stick to that person. Even then, some of the photos you're grabbing are glamour photos for Instagram etc. Realize that people tend to take MANY photos before they choose the best looking one. This is bad for you since that means they're outright lying to you about what they look like "at east." For all you know, they might be sucking and stretching skin artificially.
Please fix the head profile as well (which I hope that's what you meant earlier). I literally gave you an existing head to work from, but it's still horizontally squashed. Just please copy what is already exists in real life. Your back skull is so smashed in, it's a medical problem.
Stop bouncing around everywhere with you references. Find a model, stick to that model.
Good job with finally dropping your subdivisions. Stay here until your forms are proportionally sound.
Yeah, I was mentioning about the head. I found a model/woman I was using as a reference for the entire body. I switched to a different matcap to check out any forms that may be incorrect.
I won't disagree with you there. The roundness was suppose to be pushed up from the suit, but I decided to slump them for anatomy sake before I
do the costume.
Here's a comparison between the older version and a the new version. Instead of making her completely muscular I decided to go the curvy route; I felt it was some what more interesting for this superhero than just a muscular look this time. Originally I wanted to go a mix between muscular and curvy, but it looked like I had to choose one or the other. I may rework her shoulders and shoulder blades. I made the nose rounder, fixed her ears and redid many parts of her body.
Here's a comparison between the old and new bodies.
heartful, your head profile is still horizontally squashed unnaturally.
And if you're going for curvy, the amount of skin and fat near the collarbone should be more increased. Only time you see sharp collarbones like that is if the person is most likely emaciated somehow.
Thank you for choosing a more clay like mat cap. And gj with the abs, they look more natural now.
Some decent detailing now, but unfortunately you've lost sight of the proportions in the process. Her body has been stretched vertically. I know you're going off this reference but it is REALLY not a good muscle reference. The girl in this image is really drastically stretching and posing for the camera and sucking her stomach in. That is NOT how somebody is going to look in a stationary pose, and it's working against you and screwing your anatomy.
I did some roughish paint overs to help place your proportions, I hope you don't mind and I hope they help. In particular her waist area is really all over the place, and the placement and shape of her breasts. Again, step away for the cartoonishly perky and massive breasts. Here's a collection of drawing references for breasts.
Her nose is still looking incredibly pinched and little horizontally.
I fixed the collar bone and made it less sharper than it was before. I adjusted the head (not pictured), and I found a model that I can reference from her bald head. Basing her head off of the model.
I'm not going off that reference anymore, and that suggestion made me check her back and realized how pushed in it was (thanks for that); I adjusted her back and stomach area to make it thicker. I based her proportions (height and bone wise) of one of the images where I said she was based of of the woman at 5'11'; I took your paint over into consideration, even though it made her look shorter than I originally wanted her to look I kept a separate version (not pictured) of her for later. I'm changing her breast with a new topology, however I'm running into a problem.
I made a new topology mesh for the breast, this was by deleting the breast and using an edited spherical shape. When I import the newly refined mesh into zbrush, I get some weird polygon artifacts around her mouth and eye areas (this is when I transfer the hi poly onto the new low poly topology).
I'm planning on putting some wrinkles and pores after I fixed the breast.
Your collarbone from the front is still too depressed and pronounced. Real life women tend to not have such pronounced collarbones.
Breasts definitely look better. Did you save a previous save version of the body? Why didn't you just use the move tool to adjust the shape of the breasts?
I'll get to work on the collar bones, when I have the time. I have a save previous version of the body; I use the move tool, because I getting some pinches around her breast due to the topology. I wasn't able to get a picture of the head at the moment, but next time I'll be able to.
If there's weird mesh pinching you want to smooth out, try using the smooth brush with the Shift modifier, but then RELEASE the Shift button when you're drawing on screen to use a different algorithim that may get your the results you want.
Alright thanks for that the breast looks smoother (without the pinching).
Here's the version of the other version of PowerGirl I was talking about.
Older version, I changed her head from this head to another head; the reason is that I felt her head in this picture looked off, so I'm using a reference of multiple pictures of someone. I didn't get to post the head, but when I'm able to I will.
I was able to fix the breasts a bit, but I believe they need some more adjustments.
Here's the current shape of the head, I believe the head looks better than it was before.
I made some changes to Power Girl's body, but I had encounter the artifact issue like with the breast again. So I may use two different models, one for baking the head and the other for baking the costume and body only, since I'm making this character into a game model.
Collarbone is still so pronounced. Fix it! Third time I've noticed this.
Can anyone else chime in on the porportions? This is looking less like Power Girl and more like a . . . Brazilian who's got a lot of meat on the thighs. I'm definitely not reading heroic from these proportions.
The breasts are so large, they're back breaking. The hips so wide, they seem anatomically incorrect, especially wit the fat and muscle placement.
I'm calling the first one bad design, to speak nothing of appeal or aesthetic. It just doesn't JIVE. It doesn't really suspend disbelief, it just feels unbelievable overall.
If we're going for this:
that's fine, but it's not reading Power Girl, it reads Brazilian glamour model.
Here's a quick draw-over that I did. The big proportion notes would be:
to make the head slightly bigger, and the neck longuer.
The breasts size needs to be reduced quite a bit, and they need to be rounder. Right now your sculpting her naked, so you're probably trying to replicate how gravity would affect them... but keep in mind that your end goal is a female in a tight suit. Therefore, gravity won't have that much of an impact on them.
Her torso should taper (the waist should be bit smaller).
And finally, you definitly need to lose some volume on the hips.
Those are all quick changes that you can do at a low resolution with a move brush. I would suggest doing so before adding more details. Keep it up! :thumbup:
I'd actually encourage just blocking in the clothes at this point. KEEP IT LOW RESOLUTION. Honestly, there's not need to up-res until the body form is absolutely ready.
Don't worry about the collar bones, already I got that fixed.
The breast are loosely based off of a woman name Rosemarie Hillcrest. I'm planning on pushing them up, since they're going to be in the leotard. I found it quite illogical, if PowerGirl would have broken her back from her own breasts, but she could lift a truck and other heavier objects (normal humans couldn't lift) without much issue as a Kryptonian. Weird.
Women like that could strengthen their backs through exercises in targeting her back only, in order to increase the strength in her back so she won't have any trouble with her back anymore; in addition to changing her posture.
I have two versions (via morphtargets) of PowerGirl, since I wanted to do two versions. The original version and a completely different version (with a similar but different costume design). The original will have the version that originally I wanted and the other is the pear like version you saw. With that I wanted to make something with the original in mind, and something with more creativity.
Thanks, I didn't notice how short her neck looked. I adjusted parts of her body, I was only going for the stature of a 5'10"-11" woman. But I tried not to make her waist too small, since I'm going for something that looks somewhat realistic.
I'm working on her costume, but I'm still editing the body so it can work in conjunction with the costume; I plan on working on the torso/core area before I do any other parts of her costume at this point.
@Heartful, it'd be accurate if you mostly stuck to ONE woman, instead of picking and choosing from several. You're scattering your focus which I would be fine with if you could manage that, but I think with where your skills are at, it would be better if you just chose one woman to reference and stuck with that.
I don't know if it's accurate because it looks like you're just piecing together the monster of Frankenstein.
I chose one woman alright, then I decided to change the proportions a bit later on with other parts after I got the main body down. Here's the original version with some tweaks and fixes.
The latest image is far better than the previous ones.
One good thing is that you're constantly posting better results. if you keep this up, you will end up with a nice model. In fact, I think at the moment, your body sculpture is miles ahead of your face model, and I think you should focus on the face a bit now.
Creating a character - anatomy and proportions specifically, is a construction problem which you need to solve. In order to be able to construct a character, you need to understand the building blocks it's made from. Which is bone, muscle, fat, skin, proportions, you need to understand how age affects them, how gravity does, etc.
The better you control these, the better you will be able to CONSTRUCT a character. But until you do, when you create a character you have to make your best attempt at REPLICATING one. Which is exactly the great advice you were given, choose one reference and STICK to it. I'd say even copy the face, even if you're not 100% satisfied with it, since different people have differently sized faces in relation to their bodies and you're not yet ready to adjust one head on a different body.
Right now, it seems like you're biting off more than you can chew. You're trying to mix and match different body types, differently proportioned women, with different fat percentages and different muscle masses, you throw your own personal design preferences and put them together into one complete character.
This is a design problem you can only solve through in-depth anatomical knowledge, which will come in time if you keep practicing. But right now, it would be wise to try to bite off less, try to learn from nature and allow your reference to be your teacher.
The latest image is far better than the previous ones.
One good thing is that you're constantly posting better results. if you keep this up, you will end up with a nice model. In fact, I think at the moment, your body sculpture is miles ahead of your face model, and I think you should focus on the face a bit now.
Creating a character - anatomy and proportions specifically, is a construction problem which you need to solve. In order to be able to construct a character, you need to understand the building blocks it's made from. Which is bone, muscle, fat, skin, proportions, you need to understand how age affects them, how gravity does, etc.
The better you control these, the better you will be able to CONSTRUCT a character. But until you do, when you create a character you have to make your best attempt at REPLICATING one. Which is exactly the great advice you were given, choose one reference and STICK to it. I'd say even copy the face, even if you're not 100% satisfied with it, since different people have differently sized faces in relation to their bodies and you're not yet ready to adjust one head on a different body.
Right now, it seems like you're biting off more than you can chew. You're trying to mix and match different body types, differently proportioned women, with different fat percentages and different muscle masses, you throw your own personal design preferences and put them together into one complete character.
This is a design problem you can only solve through in-depth anatomical knowledge, which will come in time if you keep practicing. But right now, it would be wise to try to bite off less, try to learn from nature and allow your reference to be your teacher.
Great improvement so far!
Alright, so if I'm going to base PowerGirl's face off of one single person, then I might as well do this....
Nice thread!
At the moment the skull is still a bit alien like. If you have zbrush (looks like you do) you can download an .obj of a female skull and put it under the sculpt to check the volumes. I think your model has come a long way. The delts are not the right shape yet as are the thigh muscles, in fact the limb shapes are still a little odd. One thing that may help is to not forget to do a lot of 'sketch sculpts' to develop your anatomy skill. Looks like you are off to a good start!
Glad you followed the proportion changes I suggested. It looks a lot better already.
I don't have time to give you another full fledge critique right now, but I would definitly suggest to tone down the shoulder. I understand that it is a muscular woman, but this is too much. Keep it closer to the volume you had earlier. Cheers!
I adjusted the head a bit, and I didn't use the skull yet; because I found out how the head shape looks from a skeletal reference and shorten the height of the skull.
I'm making a minor update before I post the result for the suit. I fixed the face a little bit (the eyes were too high). I'm thinking about changing her face to something else. I may keep the face if other wise.
I made a new base mesh for future sculpts. It has a lot less polygons with UVs assigned to it. I had a big problem with the other base mesh, since the other one had more polygons, which equals messier looking poly flow. This mesh helps me simplify the workflow a lot more.
I felt somewhat dissatisfied with PowerGirl's body, so I may take the liberty of changing her body based off a model I saw. I'll try to keep some of the proportions from the original. I may make her body look more firmer, if she ends up looking too muscular.
Abdomincal muscles should be wider. It's unrelastically thin in the image above unless she has some mutated variation genetically.
Thumbs are way too thin Look at yours, look at the one you sculpted. Is yours that thin It's probably not. Add some meat to those bones.
Bend the fingers, you're going to make a rigger's job easier in the future if the joints are slightly bent already. Character Art works not in isolation, but in cooperation with other artists in a video game development pipeline. You need to make it work for others, not just yourself.
Other than that looks good, just get the thing done. Stop noodling, execute. What makes me sad as a game developer is seeing art that is unuseable and just stays "pretty looking" as an image in a portfolio.
"Thumbs are way too thin Look at yours, look at the one you sculpted. Is yours that thin It's probably not. Add some meat to those bones.
Bend the fingers, you're going to make a rigger's job easier in the future if the joints are slightly bent already. Character Art works not in isolation, but in cooperation with other artists in a video game development pipeline. You need to make it work for others, not just yourself."
I'll keep these in mind while I work on the gloves. I was getting a bit hesitant to work on the cloth folds, so here are the "results".
I wanted to use less wrinkles since I'm working with tights. I decided to change to body a bit, the other sculpts I was doing was a warm up to improve upon her body definition; I don't want to screw up the anatomy at all on this model. I redefined the suit, since I wasn't impressed with the other look of it.
Looking for some suggestions to see if I need to improve upon the lips, I only used my memory on the lips this time. I believe I need to rework on some of the wrinkles that's under the eye and near the nose area.
(Never mind about this part, I already got this fixed). I have a little issue in regarding some artifacts in the picture below, I'll see if I can fix it in a external modeling program or mask it off in Zbrush.
The eye area is the problem is the biggest problem I have, not just the artifacts but the feeling of it wrapping around the eyeball feels off in a way; I'm looking to drop some subdivisions, then use an inflate and project to see if that will help.
Replies
I suggest that you find a decent reference and try to match it a bit more. Test your arms by masking the rest of the body off and rotating them; if the fingertips aren't reaching between the midpoint of the thigh and the knee, they're not long enough.
Finally, Elves are typically portrayed as slender (here she looks a bit 'big boned', but it doesn't look intentional?). Whilst you don't have to go hourglass shaped, you should probably define the silhouette of the ribcage more and you could probably afford to squash her hips/butt in a little.
There are many more things but if you net yourself a good reference you'll be able to solve the problems. This one might be a decent start, but obviously, find more of your own:
You don't need to be totally exact or anything (especially since you're making an elf) but some grounding might help.
Also, I recommend using IMGUR. Imagebam seems to have a little too much fluff that it might be slightly annoying to some people.
Thanks for the arm/shoulder suggestion and the picture, I made the arms longer and made the torso a bit narrower. I collected some references for the body last night, but I ran into an error and lost those references. I'll collect more references for the body later to fix her body.
@JadeEyePanda
Sorry if my last comment was somewhat misleading, but I was thinking of giving her a tank top, long socks and gloves, ruby earrings and add some fur to the socks and gloves. Got a mood board in the link bellow including some improvements, I didn't get to upload some other improvements and the earrings I've made; the mood board has many things that I felt that was useful for the High Elf, I'm making her in a modern like pinup.
http://imgur.com/a/qI2rZ#0
It happens to a lot of early ZBrush users that they subdivide early to get the details they want, but you have to stay low to make sure you get your larger forms and bigger gestures down before you smooth it all out. Areas like you face lacking proper proportions (nostrils way too big, no planar forms, etc.), and arms needing longer biceps.
Drop your subdivisions down. Let's make sure the lower-res mesh looks good before we commit to any detail work on the body.
This elf is going to have "regular clothing" if I am understanding this correctly?
She'll use regular clothes, as in underwear and tank top. The gloves and socks will be different with added fur.
Right now, it's reading as really unnecessary and extravagant.
My tablet broke, so I may not be able to do much sculpting later on. But I should be able to fix up some of the accessories and add the rope.
I here are some comic references that I was using for my own version of Power Girl. I got some real life references for the body.
For my version of Power Girl, she's supposed to be some what muscular and fat/curvy. The suit is somewhat based off the original (last pic.), with some added muscles in the first two pictures. I may edit her boots with higher heels.
This really isn't GOOD at all, absolutely horrible. You need to study anatomy and proportions. You have at least a couple of more years before your work is to level.
If this was my work I would NEED honesty from my fellow artist.
You have to learn allot. I suggest you grab a copy of http://www.makehuman.org/ or http://store.steampowered.com/app/257400/
Create your basemesh, then sculpt over that...
Prefabs are useful best when you need to skip a huge chunk of a production cycle.
@Heartfulwarm:
What are you SPECIFICALLY using as reference for the face. I can give suggestions and paintovers on how to fix it, but it'll help a lot more if you had a specific look you were trying to copy.
Also, could you please give us an orthographic, or at least a 3/4 view, character sheet of your whole body? Paintovers may be needed.
And please, please drop your subdivisions. You're committing to bad foundational forms, which just makes your life harder to make large sweeping edits later on. Don't think that this is a possible critique, this will help your workflow.
at this stage I focused on understanding workflow...
everything your suggesting to him may be a foreign language at this stage of his growth...
he needs time to learn allot and playing with the programs I suggested will at least illustrate form and hopefully upgrade his expectations of what QUALITY work and topology should look like...
we should stop kidding the new artist into believing that staring at a reference is going to get you great work.
Your mind just has to know landmarks, insertions and volumes in-order to create a realistic or stylized representation...
This is art ,mathematics and science and if your going to be a professional, you must treat it as such.
NO DISRESPECT GUYS
@JadeEyePanda
I had some trouble with the forms earlier (had a thought that heavily defined forms were too exaggerated and figured they weren't), and I'm currently getting a better grasps of how the forms are done. All I do is use dam standard, pinch, move and sometimes the clay buildup for the lower poly form, before I subdivide the mesh. I'll switch between both the lower res and the higher res.
The face is based off several faces, I'm looking at Britney Spears's eyes for reference (originally her eyes were from another person). The eyes needs some fixing before I can call it done.
I was using Jessica Biel's nose as a reference earlier, and then the nose fell off reference when I wanted to smooth it out. Now I'm making the nose more similar to the original reference.
Her Jaw/facial structure was based off of this pic.
The structure of the back of her head has been loosely based off of this picture, I may adjust the forehead.
It's good to hear you're starting sort of over again, but let's make sure your silhouettes and what not are solid before we commit to details.
:poly122:
Oh alright, earlier I did some work hours before I got that advice. Looks like I'll do both body and face silhouettes before I add anymore details. The temptation always gets to me though.:poly127:
I want to see faceting, that's how low we want.
I've attached the first big issue I see. Hopefully this reiterates that it'll be much easier and useful to pop to a lower subdivision to fix these form and proportion issues.
With your skill level right now, you need to choose better references. I think your decision to pick and choose from multiple female faces is destroying the ease of use that is just choosing one person's likeness and imitating that into a sculpt. Just attempt to recreate what God gave birth to already (plus or minus any plastic surgery / photoshop magic). It's too all over he place to pick and choose this woman's lips, and then this woman's eyes, etc.
If you want reference images INSIDE the Zbrush document, Google and search for how to use Spotlight in Zbrush to place images into the document as reference.
Turn off polypaint. We don't care about that right now (we will later), we care about the surface first.
What I think should happen:
1) Block out forms. Stay at low-res, make sure silhouette of the body and face all work. Big general forms of the body and gestures should be there and solid.
2) Subdivide. Work on medium forms. Concentrate on making sure the planes of the face and body are created. The landmark bony definitions are defined on both face and body.
3) Subdivide again. Detail as neceassary, but making sure each step has all the detail one could muster in that particular subdivision.
Also, download John Asaro's planes of the face. This is what we're going to use to nail down your facial forms before you "tempt" yourself to up-res.
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=76733
And stick to a (grey) clay-like matcap. No weird fancy matcaps, treat this like an actual sculpture.
http://41.media.tumblr.com/152cc6af0a7c170c644039dafed7e03f/tumblr_mgrzhyQJPh1rw2a8zo1_500.jpg
https://nsfitbitch.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/150lbs.jpg
http://28.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m1i61vpjyf1qlbnppo1_500.png
I don't think you're getting it yet, Heartful.
Your attempt to pick and choose from several references is understandable, but you're ending up with a Frankenstein of a woman instead of a woman that makes design sense. You need unity to your design, and not this hodge podge of a mess.
You need to find reference of an existing person and stick to that person. Even then, some of the photos you're grabbing are glamour photos for Instagram etc. Realize that people tend to take MANY photos before they choose the best looking one. This is bad for you since that means they're outright lying to you about what they look like "at east." For all you know, they might be sucking and stretching skin artificially.
Please fix the head profile as well (which I hope that's what you meant earlier). I literally gave you an existing head to work from, but it's still horizontally squashed. Just please copy what is already exists in real life. Your back skull is so smashed in, it's a medical problem.
Stop bouncing around everywhere with you references. Find a model, stick to that model.
Good job with finally dropping your subdivisions. Stay here until your forms are proportionally sound.
Parts of the model are looking good, but I'm sorry, those are not what breasts look like in any situation. They literally look like ballons taped to her chest. Before you start sculpting cheese-cakey stuff, you should look at actual references of the female body especially breasts! In your latest sculpt, they are far too big, far too low on her chest, and too far apart. If you feel like you need to give big breasts to a female character to balance out the shoulders, then reduce the shoulders (because they too are too big in the latest sculpt). If you're going to give a female realistic character large breasts they should be realistic breasts, not anime-level tits.
Some additional things; typical female anatomy tells that hip width should be on par with shoulder width. So if a character has wide shoulders they should have wide hips that match the shoulder width, and vis versa. It seems like your characters have very narrow hips, or have hip fat/muscle mass that is too low down (like with the first elf character, her actual hip area is very narrow and instead her upper thighs are very big. that mass on the upper thighs should be on the hips instead, or else the character will appear unbalanced.)
My advise is practice references of realistic female bodies before trying to exaggerate sex appeal. Large exaggerate breasts won't look like realistic breasts until you understand how normal realistic breasts work, ditto with other aspects of the body. Additionally, as already said, work from a single full body reference, with different angles, rather than putting together varying references. Some of the references you've chosen for the recent sculpt are of women pulling very particular poses. Those poses are not what women will look like when relaxed (especially the last post. It's of a woman stretching, and you've tried to incorporate that look into the sculpt, but your character isn't stretching and so it comes out looking very incorrect).
Additionally you're trying to go for a very muscular look, as in the first reference, but only her arms appear muscular. Very muscular women will have much more muscle mass in their pectoral/breast area, so have smaller more muscular looking breasts not pillowy beach balls.
I'd also work on getting your noses down, parts of her face sculpt are looking great (beautiful lips!) but I think it's getting let down by your noses. While the detail is great in them, they're tiny and sharp and thin. Putting more focus on making noses rounded and firm and the right size will help bring those shapes together more!
Yeah, I was mentioning about the head. I found a model/woman I was using as a reference for the entire body. I switched to a different matcap to check out any forms that may be incorrect.
@drysider
I won't disagree with you there. The roundness was suppose to be pushed up from the suit, but I decided to slump them for anatomy sake before I
do the costume.
Here's a comparison between the older version and a the new version. Instead of making her completely muscular I decided to go the curvy route; I felt it was some what more interesting for this superhero than just a muscular look this time. Originally I wanted to go a mix between muscular and curvy, but it looked like I had to choose one or the other. I may rework her shoulders and shoulder blades. I made the nose rounder, fixed her ears and redid many parts of her body.
Here's a comparison between the old and new bodies.
Old
New Bodies
Original
Modified
And if you're going for curvy, the amount of skin and fat near the collarbone should be more increased. Only time you see sharp collarbones like that is if the person is most likely emaciated somehow.
Thank you for choosing a more clay like mat cap. And gj with the abs, they look more natural now.
I did some roughish paint overs to help place your proportions, I hope you don't mind and I hope they help. In particular her waist area is really all over the place, and the placement and shape of her breasts. Again, step away for the cartoonishly perky and massive breasts. Here's a collection of drawing references for breasts.
Her nose is still looking incredibly pinched and little horizontally.
I fixed the collar bone and made it less sharper than it was before. I adjusted the head (not pictured), and I found a model that I can reference from her bald head. Basing her head off of the model.
@drysider
I'm not going off that reference anymore, and that suggestion made me check her back and realized how pushed in it was (thanks for that); I adjusted her back and stomach area to make it thicker. I based her proportions (height and bone wise) of one of the images where I said she was based of of the woman at 5'11'; I took your paint over into consideration, even though it made her look shorter than I originally wanted her to look I kept a separate version (not pictured) of her for later. I'm changing her breast with a new topology, however I'm running into a problem.
I made a new topology mesh for the breast, this was by deleting the breast and using an edited spherical shape. When I import the newly refined mesh into zbrush, I get some weird polygon artifacts around her mouth and eye areas (this is when I transfer the hi poly onto the new low poly topology).
I'm planning on putting some wrinkles and pores after I fixed the breast.
Breasts definitely look better. Did you save a previous save version of the body? Why didn't you just use the move tool to adjust the shape of the breasts?
Can we get a profile view of the head?
Here's the version of the other version of PowerGirl I was talking about.
Older version, I changed her head from this head to another head; the reason is that I felt her head in this picture looked off, so I'm using a reference of multiple pictures of someone. I didn't get to post the head, but when I'm able to I will.
I was able to fix the breasts a bit, but I believe they need some more adjustments.
I made some changes to Power Girl's body, but I had encounter the artifact issue like with the breast again. So I may use two different models, one for baking the head and the other for baking the costume and body only, since I'm making this character into a game model.
Can anyone else chime in on the porportions? This is looking less like Power Girl and more like a . . . Brazilian who's got a lot of meat on the thighs. I'm definitely not reading heroic from these proportions.
The breasts are so large, they're back breaking. The hips so wide, they seem anatomically incorrect, especially wit the fat and muscle placement.
I'm seeing this:
[URL="http://ss2sonic.deviantart.com/art/Power-Girl-389343749[/URL]
and not this:
I'm calling the first one bad design, to speak nothing of appeal or aesthetic. It just doesn't JIVE. It doesn't really suspend disbelief, it just feels unbelievable overall.
If we're going for this:
that's fine, but it's not reading Power Girl, it reads Brazilian glamour model.
Here's a quick draw-over that I did. The big proportion notes would be:
- to make the head slightly bigger, and the neck longuer.
- The breasts size needs to be reduced quite a bit, and they need to be rounder. Right now your sculpting her naked, so you're probably trying to replicate how gravity would affect them... but keep in mind that your end goal is a female in a tight suit. Therefore, gravity won't have that much of an impact on them.
- Her torso should taper (the waist should be bit smaller).
- And finally, you definitly need to lose some volume on the hips.
Those are all quick changes that you can do at a low resolution with a move brush. I would suggest doing so before adding more details. Keep it up! :thumbup:Don't worry about the collar bones, already I got that fixed.
The breast are loosely based off of a woman name Rosemarie Hillcrest. I'm planning on pushing them up, since they're going to be in the leotard. I found it quite illogical, if PowerGirl would have broken her back from her own breasts, but she could lift a truck and other heavier objects (normal humans couldn't lift) without much issue as a Kryptonian. Weird.
Women like that could strengthen their backs through exercises in targeting her back only, in order to increase the strength in her back so she won't have any trouble with her back anymore; in addition to changing her posture.
I have two versions (via morphtargets) of PowerGirl, since I wanted to do two versions. The original version and a completely different version (with a similar but different costume design). The original will have the version that originally I wanted and the other is the pear like version you saw. With that I wanted to make something with the original in mind, and something with more creativity.
The hips....
Accurate or Inaccurate?
@Jean-Pascal
Thanks, I didn't notice how short her neck looked. I adjusted parts of her body, I was only going for the stature of a 5'10"-11" woman. But I tried not to make her waist too small, since I'm going for something that looks somewhat realistic.
I'm working on her costume, but I'm still editing the body so it can work in conjunction with the costume; I plan on working on the torso/core area before I do any other parts of her costume at this point.
I don't know if it's accurate because it looks like you're just piecing together the monster of Frankenstein.
One good thing is that you're constantly posting better results. if you keep this up, you will end up with a nice model. In fact, I think at the moment, your body sculpture is miles ahead of your face model, and I think you should focus on the face a bit now.
Creating a character - anatomy and proportions specifically, is a construction problem which you need to solve. In order to be able to construct a character, you need to understand the building blocks it's made from. Which is bone, muscle, fat, skin, proportions, you need to understand how age affects them, how gravity does, etc.
The better you control these, the better you will be able to CONSTRUCT a character. But until you do, when you create a character you have to make your best attempt at REPLICATING one. Which is exactly the great advice you were given, choose one reference and STICK to it. I'd say even copy the face, even if you're not 100% satisfied with it, since different people have differently sized faces in relation to their bodies and you're not yet ready to adjust one head on a different body.
Right now, it seems like you're biting off more than you can chew. You're trying to mix and match different body types, differently proportioned women, with different fat percentages and different muscle masses, you throw your own personal design preferences and put them together into one complete character.
This is a design problem you can only solve through in-depth anatomical knowledge, which will come in time if you keep practicing. But right now, it would be wise to try to bite off less, try to learn from nature and allow your reference to be your teacher.
Great improvement so far!
Alright, so if I'm going to base PowerGirl's face off of one single person, then I might as well do this....
The nose may need some adjustment.
At the moment the skull is still a bit alien like. If you have zbrush (looks like you do) you can download an .obj of a female skull and put it under the sculpt to check the volumes. I think your model has come a long way. The delts are not the right shape yet as are the thigh muscles, in fact the limb shapes are still a little odd. One thing that may help is to not forget to do a lot of 'sketch sculpts' to develop your anatomy skill. Looks like you are off to a good start!
I don't have time to give you another full fledge critique right now, but I would definitly suggest to tone down the shoulder. I understand that it is a muscular woman, but this is too much. Keep it closer to the volume you had earlier. Cheers!
I adjusted the head a bit, and I didn't use the skull yet; because I found out how the head shape looks from a skeletal reference and shorten the height of the skull.
@Jean-Pascal
Yeah I can agree with you on that one.
I got the shoulders adjusted through morph targets and I did a anatomy test.
The suit will get some wrinkles soon.
The face has been off the top of my mind, and I was using help with some muscle anatomy. Believe the shoulder may need to be rounder
Here are some more views.
I felt somewhat dissatisfied with PowerGirl's body, so I may take the liberty of changing her body based off a model I saw. I'll try to keep some of the proportions from the original. I may make her body look more firmer, if she ends up looking too muscular.
Thumbs are way too thin Look at yours, look at the one you sculpted. Is yours that thin It's probably not. Add some meat to those bones.
Bend the fingers, you're going to make a rigger's job easier in the future if the joints are slightly bent already. Character Art works not in isolation, but in cooperation with other artists in a video game development pipeline. You need to make it work for others, not just yourself.
Other than that looks good, just get the thing done. Stop noodling, execute. What makes me sad as a game developer is seeing art that is unuseable and just stays "pretty looking" as an image in a portfolio.
Bend the fingers, you're going to make a rigger's job easier in the future if the joints are slightly bent already. Character Art works not in isolation, but in cooperation with other artists in a video game development pipeline. You need to make it work for others, not just yourself."
I'll keep these in mind while I work on the gloves. I was getting a bit hesitant to work on the cloth folds, so here are the "results".
I wanted to use less wrinkles since I'm working with tights. I decided to change to body a bit, the other sculpts I was doing was a warm up to improve upon her body definition; I don't want to screw up the anatomy at all on this model. I redefined the suit, since I wasn't impressed with the other look of it.
(Never mind about this part, I already got this fixed). I have a little issue in regarding some artifacts in the picture below, I'll see if I can fix it in a external modeling program or mask it off in Zbrush.
The eye area is the problem is the biggest problem I have, not just the artifacts but the feeling of it wrapping around the eyeball feels off in a way; I'm looking to drop some subdivisions, then use an inflate and project to see if that will help.