Minotuar - Zbrush

Christo Oosthuizen

Hey Peoplez!
2nd day here on polycount and thought id share what im working on and hopefully get some feedback.

I decided to start learning Zbrush and made this WIP minotuar.







Ive been idle a while on this now, because im not sure what would be the best way to start putting armor and stuff on him, so if anyone can advise id appreciate it alot!

Thanks:thumbup:

Brian "Panda" Choi

Looks mostly solid. Fingers could definitely use more loving, they just look unsculpted at the moment.

The sternocleidomastoid muscle that's coming down from the bottom of the chin to the colarbone has it's top insertion point wrong. Should be originating from the back of the ear roughly to the collarbone.



Your A pose could be a gesturally a lot better. Move his head foward relative to the chest, because it feels pushed back, lke someone trying to artificially create a double chin.

The abdominal muscles seem to literally be bumps. I'd look into real life references of fit males, see how those muscles actually appear on their bellies.

There's a couple ways of going about adding armor. You can just:

1) Dynamesh a"lump of clay," and free sculpt blocked in armor(doesn't need to be super clean, just enough to . . . ), and then retopo the rough sculpts later to clean geo.
2) Model subdivision models in Maya, Max etc., and then bring those in.

Both methods end up with relatively clean geometry, and potentially geo you just revery back to to get your low poly.

smessier

There's something about making a minotaur that new Zbrushers are drawn to. It was one of the first character attempts myself, and I struggled with it.

I recommend doing anatomy studies/sculpts. Start to know the placement of muscles and how everything connects, how one muscle looks a certain way under lighting conditions, when it's tense, and even from a different angle. It's something that everyone needs to study at different intervals in their career.

The believability of this character is going to stem very heavily on anatomy, and right now it's amorphous. Which isn't a bad thing, because I think it's a good base to come back to after you study a bit more. I've revisited characters that I thought were bad, but I realized gave me a good start and were interesting ideas. I try to have specific focuses on design or workflow with my characters; it could be a focus on anatomy, or a focus on cloth, or a focus on armor. Essentially, I'm trying to learn something new every time I make a character, and each process is an escalation of what I've done before. I think you can see that between my Djinn and Brute, or my scifi characters for Spacebear.

So instead of pushing around this guys anatomy and details, drop him for now and move on to some studies. If you focus completely on the basics right now, you'll progress very quickly. I also feel like you already have sculpting skill, so once you get used to the program flow and feel, come back to this minotaur. You'll see him in a new light.

Thanks for sharing man.

Christo Oosthuizen

@JadeEyePanda
Thanks for the advice, I know that working on something for a long time will make one blind to things that might be wrong with it, but after you pointed out the neck muscle and the head, I could clearly see that it wasn't right.

@smessier
Haha, I also noticed new users of a software tend to gravitate to making similar things, quite interesting if you ask me.
At the moment I cant see how its amorphous, but that's most likely due to my lack of anatomy knowledge.
Im going to take your advice and switch over to some anatomy studies.
Thanks alot bro!

JohnDraisey

Good start, and you should lock in the pose and overall flow of its silhouette before progressing further. The hands should be arched slightly. Just hold your hand in a relaxed pose and you'll see what i mean. Also, the thumbs should be facing to the front, so twist the wrists 90 degrees.