Head Anatomy

Dr.HeatSync

In order to have a better understanding of the human face so that I can make something actually believable. This thread will be dedicated to building up faces from skulls with muscles, fat, and so on. There will be many failures, more than likely you will scream 'pls kill these with fire' but hopefully after some countless number and a lot of critique, I'll be able to make something hopefully above and beyond decent.

So starting out, I've spent my day blocking out a skull with Dynamesh (images in perspective).



I used these images for an orthographic reference, and was used in zbrush to check proportions.




Other references include:

http://www.drawninblack.com/2011/12/skull-anatomy-for-artists/
http://www.gwc.maricopa.edu/class/bio201/skull/latskul.htm
http://s1.hubimg.com/u/2740074_f520.jpg
http://www.cliffsnotes.com/sciences/anatomy-and-physiology/the-skeletal-system/skull-cranium-and-facial-bones
http://www.innerbody.com/image/skel03.html

My next steps are to block out the vertebrae and to create the individual bones of the skull in more detail (but not high frequency detail mind you); the intent is to get out of the lost land; to actually be able to name all of the landmarks and know how the bones are influencing the shape of the other parts. Whilst doing this, of course I'd be correcting errors based on feedback as well.

Feedback would be much appreciated.

Brian "Panda" Choi

While you're making these sculpts, really take time to understand where the bony landmarks are (i.e. places on the human body where the bone "pushes out" the skin.)

Places on the skull like the tip of the nasal cavity and zygomatic arch are bony landmarks, among other places.

Dr.HeatSync

@JadeEyePanda Yeah I will be trying to do that, hopefully I'll be able to pinpoint the names to those locations as well

I made the cerebral vertebrae and I did something that is quite tedious but ultimately helps me learn the names, shapes and purposes of the bones on the skull; I looked up the many bones on the skull, split the sulpt into seperate subtools (so Maxilla, zygomatic, temporal, etc) and labelled the important landmarks that were (at least in my mind) responsible to directly influencing the muscle and fat shapes.



Its a somewhat rough approximation as a result of splitting and extracting, but I'm hoping its at least accurate enough to be able to recognise a part on a fully welded skull. I'm not really labelling the innards like the Nasal Septum so much or deeply obscured parts like the Occipital Condyle, I'm hoping that those are much less important (unless of course, the character one was trying to do was a skeletal warrior or something).

One that does confuse me a bit is the Lacrimal bone which resides on the Frontal Process of the Maxilla and within the eye socket; The shape really confuses me and I don't even know if I sculpted it right to a relevant level of accuracy, or if it drastically affects the eye position or more importantly, influences the tear duct.



refs for Lacrimal:







So what I'm gonna do next is that I'm gonna take my non-split skull and try to get that more accurately sculpted and then start to put the muscles on it, which I imagine is going to take a while to do.

Dr.HeatSync

After a long time of researching and sculpting the individual muscles on the face I have a head with the superficial muscles placed on and labelled. I've also added the nasal cartilages, the eyes and the ears.



References include a lot of wikipedia-ing, searching on google images and the Ryan Kingslien anatomy sculpt was helpful as well.

Next I'll be trying to identify areas of fatty tissues and try to put a skin onto the body. I have no idea how well that's going to go based on this face. As always critique is appreciated.