Dying Gaul Anatomy Sculpt

nickcomeau

Hey polycount!

I'm relatively new on the forum but am really excited to be here. I am working on recreating the Dying Gaul sculpture and would love critique from you all as I move through this project. It is going to be a high res zBrush sculpt focusing on anatomy, specifically bone and muscle structures. Any tips or crits you have are much appreciated! Here is the reference of the original sculpture and my week one progress shots. Going to be adding muscle mass to the upper body this week! Oh and lastly I guess I should add this is for my class taught by Jacque Choi, who is very critical of our work so please, the more information the better.

nickcomeau

This week, I worked on the torso, back and shoulders as well as giving the head some structure. For the purposes of the class all of the muscles groups are going to be more defined than they naturally might be to try and show how all the muscles attach and work together. Also, I decided not to copy the original Dying Gaul head though because it kind of creeps me out though. Next week, appendages. I'm always eager to learn more about anatomy so please feel free to throw references or information my way to push this to the next level! Thanks

KingKellogg

Can't wait to see it finished!

SuperFranky

I think it would've been a much better idea NOT to fuse the left hand with the leg, because that would make your work much easier. You can always fuse those parts together later.

almighty_gir

SuperFranky wrote: »

I think it would've been a much better idea NOT to fuse the left hand with the leg, because that would make your work much easier. You can always fuse those parts together later.

I'm sure the guy sculpting it out of solid rock thought the same thing

SuperFranky

almighty_gir wrote: »

I'm sure the guy sculpting it out of solid rock thought the same thing

Luckily we don't work with stone

nickcomeau

Update for today. I worked on the chest, and arms mostly (getting every muscle in the forearm took a while). I also fixed the anatomy of the obliques, the serratus anterior and the whole back. I'm focusing this more on the muscle groups, and veering away from the original sculpt a bit, using it more as a positional reference now because I want to get into the underlying anatomy more. Any suggestions or critiques would be much appreciated. Or references that I could look at? Thanks guys!

nickcomeau

Hey guys! It's been a little while since I last posted but I figured I'd put out an update. Here are my renders for the anatomy study I did. The exercise focused on getting all the anatomy correct so he has about 1% body fat on him. Any critique on the anatomy or the rendering would be much appreciated!

JacqueChoi

Was totally awesome watching you level up during this assignment!

XD

Goeddy

hey, looking nice.

you still got a long way ahead though.
one thing you should keep in mind is that muscles are not just there for looking nice, they fullfil a purpose and they look very different when they are being used.

for example your tricepses look very identical although one is relaxed while the other is pushing up his body.

nickcomeau

Thanks Jacque! Obviously it's because I learned from the best Goeddy thanks for the comment. That makes a lot of sense I see that I miss that now, definitely want to go back into it and fix it up.

TheodorUrhed

The second render is just awesome! I love the direction of the light and the pose really shines in that angle.

The first render has a really bad angle imo, it makes his right hand look really small, and the head huge (which it actually is on the sculpt too, come to think of it) and I personally really dislike bloom, especially on skin.

If you don't want the shadows to create that ugly "layered" effect, increase the shadow rays count found under BPR Shadow, it takes a bit longer to render, sure, but looks a lot nicer

nickcomeau

Thanks for the feedback TheodorUrhed. I went back into it a bit this morning with your critique in mind. Is this better? I made the head a bit smaller, the hand a bit longer, increased the ray count (thanks for that by the way I was getting frustrated by the shadows but had no idea where to fix that setting) and then took off a bit of the bloom and made it a bit less of a dramatic angle. It's also a bit softer and not as blown out/exposed now lighting-wise.

TheodorUrhed

Yup, that is looking a lot better! ^^ The hands are still a bit small though, which should be an easy thing to adjust.

I also checked out your website and I really like the layout and design of it, but there's this annoying effect when each picture loads, where it goes from pixly to less pixly to less pixly, etc. until it arrives at the final image. It might seem like a minor thing but it adds about half a second to each image load, which quickly becomes frustrating. Just thought I'd give you a heads-up, if it even is anything you can change

nickcomeau

Thanks! I'm constantly trying to update it and get some of my old work off of it because my old work is not very good :P And thanks for the heads-up! I'll try and look into why that's happening. I definitely can see how that would be bothersome to look at. Thanks for the feedback

Also, I just checked out your site. You've got some great work there, I really like your final presentations and how dynamic your work is