Stylized Head Sculpt
polycounter lvl 7
Haven't done a humanoid sculpt in a while, so I though I'd get in some practice with a quick head sculpt. Decided to have a bit of fun, too, and try to do a stylized head a-la Clone Wars.
Critiques very much welcome!
Critiques very much welcome!
Replies
I think, it would be interesting, if you give his main hair a little bit more volume.
This week I'm doing some low-poly stuff for work, so this was just going to be a throwaway sculpt for funzies and to get back into character work. I ended up spending close to two hours on it, so I'm definitely to come back to this come Monday. I do like the idea of doing a full bust, and painting it up real nice as well, as it'll give me some additional practice doing clothing.
-Slid the ear back (thanks for catching that, by the way, DKK!) and eased up that transition between the side of the head and face.
-Also played around the hair a little bit as well, so it's got an angled ridge in the middle. Might take it or leave it, though.
-Puffed up the cheekbones and changed the lines around the eyes, as I found I didn't like what was happening with those originally.
-Added a neck and basic cloth for the bust. still working with the neck for proportions until I merge it with the head. Need to find more references for Starfleet uniforms.
Not sure about the eyebrows; in the style references for Clone Wars I've been using, the brows seem to be plush against the head or else are just painted on.
Some of my references below. Found this great profile shot of Stewart a while back - need to look around for that.
Taking another pass at the uniform - collar was giving me grief. Also switched back the hair to a more uniform mass with a poly-painted texture, as I want this sculpt to look like Star Trek TNG done over in Clone Wars style.
I can't seem to get the edges as crisp as I want them, and using the pinch tool and other brushes distorts the sharper contours ever-so-slightly. I may retopologize the mesh with a Z-Sphere to better refine the edge quality or else take it into another program altogether where I can edit the edges directly, though if anyone out there knows of other methods, I'm all ears.
Much obliged, all!
Had some time to work on this today - fixed the collar, finally. This week I'll do some touch-ups and throw some colors on there.
Threw on some base colors and played around with the face some more, especially around the eyes, cheeks and chin. Plus, took the uniform through retopo. to get a cleaner mesh. Me and the crease tool are like *this* now.
Good call on the eyes, Jolt, thanks - looked at the screens again and thought: damn - need to tweak those peepers! I looked at Clone Wars references again and it looks like the eyes are closer to real-life proportions than I realized.
I think the neck looks too thick from the side, especially considering how thin it looks from the front. The corner of the jaw also looks too sharp, even for a stylized look.
I'd work on the materials some more, now that youve added color, this shader isn't working for the skin parts. The blacks are way too black, to be on human skin.
I really like the progress tho, keep it up!
Much obliged for the tips, Brad! something about the neck was bugging me and after looking at it again, the jaw was sharper than it needed to be. I also changed the jawline to be less straight-edged as a whole - in addition to some minor tweaks to the face and hair. Ended up scrapping the eyelids and modeling them on as separate subtools.
I've played with the shaders some and lightened things up as well. I want to get as close to the Clone Wars look as I can. Still need to add pores or something to the skin, however,and continue working on the uniform. I may need to slice part of the cheek off to get rid of that strip running down the side of the face.
Maybe you reduce his body a little bit, like a roman bust is the head the main atraction. I made a paintover to show you what I mean.
@Slosh; Thanks, man! Your paint-over was much appreciated! The profile view feels much improved.
@Crazy Pixel, BradMyers; Good call guys - I cut off a large portion of the uniform and I think the smaller uniform section works much better. Put more weight on the bust's left to break up the symmetry.
-Eyelids were still bothering me so I played around with those. Still some tweaking to do with the eye shape, I think.
-Worked some the polypaint for the skin.
-Did some work around the lower half of the face - not 100% happy with it, so I'll tweak it more this week.
-Polypaint for the uniform to exaggerate the light and dark areas more.
-Top of the skull had odd slope to it, so I made it more rounded.
-The mouth height and lower half of the face were bothering me so I took another pass at that.
Gotten to the point where I'm just endlessly tweaking stuff to see what works, so I'm gonna call this one done before I go crazier. I'll pick it back up on a later date, but now I'm moving on to a new project with a more concrete goal in mind.
Much obliged to everyone who put in their two cents on this one. If anyone's got any last words, don't be shy - with luck, it'll make future projects that much better! Until next time...
Id say a couple of things that you could do to improve this further without much work is to give him a more relaxed facial expression (its sorta gotten more angry looking as things progressed) and just look at some renders you like in a similar style and try to reproduce that. It looks really cool as is, but the rendering is not making it shine as much as it could be. But again, good work here man!