Stylized Sculpt Studies
polycounter lvl 6
Hey there everyone. So this is something I've been meaning to do for a long time, but haven't really had the gumption to get around to. I've had a number of projects stop and start because of my indecision on how to approach getting a job at my studio of choice.
Recently it sort of dawned on me thanks to a number of my peers that I need to be focusing on not just replicating what is IN the games I want to work on, but attempting to get ahead of the curve. Something I've noticed a lot of artists doing is mastering this sort of "high poly-stylized" sculpture hybrid. It's weird to me, but it's super appealing. The challenge I find though is combining the correct mixture of surface detail with over arching forms in order to convey materials with no color information.
BASICALLY, what I realized is, that it's time to just roll up my sleeves and start doing daily studies again. Daily studies and getting tons of critique.
So here's my first day's post:
I'm focusing on attempting to create two types of wood here. I started off working to create the thinner lights as a guide, then on a softer intensity went through and enboldened the striations. I also used a healthy amount of the flatten and polish hard to create gouges. After that I went through and on a medium intensity with a super small brush I added tons of fine wood grain lines.
For the top, more polished version, I simply saved morph target, then went through and used "polish hard" on the front and side surfaces. This decreased the detail but I felt brought the wood closer to that of an actual polished material.
For the first, I was aiming for something like this:
The challenge that seems to lie here is where to start and where to stop with a lot of the finer details in the wood. It feels like most of that information is contained within the texture itself. Either way, I felt like the polish hard brought me close to that result, and tomorrows study will focus more intensely on practicing it on an actual shape that might catch the light in more interesting ways.
And for the second, I was aiming for something inspired by Fanny Vergne's work on her twilight's hammer cart:
Either way, yeah... this is super challenging, and any and all tips are greatly appreciated!
Recently it sort of dawned on me thanks to a number of my peers that I need to be focusing on not just replicating what is IN the games I want to work on, but attempting to get ahead of the curve. Something I've noticed a lot of artists doing is mastering this sort of "high poly-stylized" sculpture hybrid. It's weird to me, but it's super appealing. The challenge I find though is combining the correct mixture of surface detail with over arching forms in order to convey materials with no color information.
BASICALLY, what I realized is, that it's time to just roll up my sleeves and start doing daily studies again. Daily studies and getting tons of critique.
So here's my first day's post:
I'm focusing on attempting to create two types of wood here. I started off working to create the thinner lights as a guide, then on a softer intensity went through and enboldened the striations. I also used a healthy amount of the flatten and polish hard to create gouges. After that I went through and on a medium intensity with a super small brush I added tons of fine wood grain lines.
For the top, more polished version, I simply saved morph target, then went through and used "polish hard" on the front and side surfaces. This decreased the detail but I felt brought the wood closer to that of an actual polished material.
For the first, I was aiming for something like this:
The challenge that seems to lie here is where to start and where to stop with a lot of the finer details in the wood. It feels like most of that information is contained within the texture itself. Either way, I felt like the polish hard brought me close to that result, and tomorrows study will focus more intensely on practicing it on an actual shape that might catch the light in more interesting ways.
And for the second, I was aiming for something inspired by Fanny Vergne's work on her twilight's hammer cart:
Either way, yeah... this is super challenging, and any and all tips are greatly appreciated!
Replies
Any special brushes you are using for this?
@Soul Exist: I find that watching other people do such sculpting (Tutorials, YouTube, etc) helps a lot to figure out a workflow for yourself.
Kinda the same thing as for programmers. Good programmers tend to comment code in a way that explains the why, not the what xD