Saw your frustration on WAYWO and hopefully I can weigh with some advice. I've been spamming likeness portraits for just over a year now and while I'm a long way from being a master I think I've picked up a lot along the way
In my experience the path to getting a good likeness has two pretty basic steps-
1: Make the portrait recognisable as the person it was supposed to be.
2: Make the portrait a realistic representation of the person it's supposed to be.
Step 1 is actually pretty easy to do, I see a lot of technically mediocre sculpts that are instantly recognisable - example. I think this has a lot to do with how the human brain interprets facial features - exaggerating prominent features in order to more easily recognise people. This step is pretty much transferring what your brain has interpreted and making it in 3D.
Step 2 is where things start to get difficult. It's very difficult fighting what your brain is telling you about the size/positioning of the features and what you are actually seeing. It's also sometimes very easy to overlook more subtle features in favour of larger more defining ones.
Your likeness are actually very good, easily recongisable - even without hair/clothing. Definitely more advanced than step 1, but not quite mature enough to be a realistic representation of the subjects. I think your main issues right now are small problems with anatomy and generally over-exaggeration of certain features which is giving a slightly caricature feel to some of them. I'd also recommend posting a few different angles of the sculpts - especially for celebrity likenesses - I feel like the profile view is really really important in defining a likeness (even from the front).
This is more prolific on the girl sculpt - the folds over the eyelids physically protrude quite significantly and the fold itself is quite large. In the reference it's much more subtle. Likewise the eyelid itself is way more vertical in the reference, it's receding far too quickly in the sculpt. Also take a look at this image of the ref with adjusted levels:
Do you see how prominent the nasolabial fold is? Even in women and young people there is a really significant plane change there. It doesn't have to be a massive wrinkle but certainly a change in form.
Anyways, enough of my rambling - hopefully some of it made sense/was helpful
Replies
Saw your frustration on WAYWO and hopefully I can weigh with some advice. I've been spamming likeness portraits for just over a year now and while I'm a long way from being a master I think I've picked up a lot along the way
In my experience the path to getting a good likeness has two pretty basic steps-
1: Make the portrait recognisable as the person it was supposed to be.
2: Make the portrait a realistic representation of the person it's supposed to be.
Step 1 is actually pretty easy to do, I see a lot of technically mediocre sculpts that are instantly recognisable - example. I think this has a lot to do with how the human brain interprets facial features - exaggerating prominent features in order to more easily recognise people. This step is pretty much transferring what your brain has interpreted and making it in 3D.
Step 2 is where things start to get difficult. It's very difficult fighting what your brain is telling you about the size/positioning of the features and what you are actually seeing. It's also sometimes very easy to overlook more subtle features in favour of larger more defining ones.
Your likeness are actually very good, easily recongisable - even without hair/clothing. Definitely more advanced than step 1, but not quite mature enough to be a realistic representation of the subjects. I think your main issues right now are small problems with anatomy and generally over-exaggeration of certain features which is giving a slightly caricature feel to some of them. I'd also recommend posting a few different angles of the sculpts - especially for celebrity likenesses - I feel like the profile view is really really important in defining a likeness (even from the front).
This is more prolific on the girl sculpt - the folds over the eyelids physically protrude quite significantly and the fold itself is quite large. In the reference it's much more subtle. Likewise the eyelid itself is way more vertical in the reference, it's receding far too quickly in the sculpt. Also take a look at this image of the ref with adjusted levels:
Do you see how prominent the nasolabial fold is? Even in women and young people there is a really significant plane change there. It doesn't have to be a massive wrinkle but certainly a change in form.
Anyways, enough of my rambling - hopefully some of it made sense/was helpful
I have more of a styelised background so yeah trying to divorce myself from that is proving to be quite difficult.
@ CapableWizard : ace! Thanks for the tips. I might have to steal that levels trick to help me out a bit too.
Thanks again I hope to have another one soon. Might as well keep up the male female switch going so time for another chick.