Dragon Statue

Mike8917

I just purchased a new Wacom! So I thought I'd celebrate by sculpting a dragon (or attempt to).

Mainly, I'd just like to use zbrush to sculpt something from scratch - I've only ever really used it for detail passes and high res geo for tiling textures. So feels good to try something different!

Still roughing it out atm. It's actually part of a scene that I'm working on. Basically, it's going to be a statue of a dragon in shackles, so he's going to be pretty angry!

Here's what I have so far. Not much detail at all yet. I've reached a point where I'm a little confused about the order of workflow actually. Still using dynamesh atm. I'm thinking perhaps I could keep everything as seperate subtools until I have the right shape for everything, and then start to pose them. Then, once I'm happy with that, I can start to merge everything together and begin to add details. Is that right?


Also, any feedback on the proportions would be grand

Cheers!

Vertrucio

Stop detailing the face and get all of the anatomy, form flow, and pose worked out. You're going to have to remesh that thing anyway.

And its jaw is opening at a ridiculous angle. This is a lizard based dragon design, not a serpent based design, its mouth couldn't open that big without breaking its jaw.

Block in the wings, the claws, etc. Join the legs with the main body and make the body have some sort of anatomy.

Work from references off various reptiles, do not try to sculpt this from nowhere.

Mike8917

Sounds good Vertrucio! Yes I agree with you about the jaw, it's a bit much. I tried to make it look as though it was screaming, but it looks like went a bit too far with it.

Yeah I'll grab some more ref and start working out the pose.

Thanks for the feedback

Mike8917

I've decided to to go back and try a simpler pose to the one I had in mind. I was working from a few concepts and trying to adopt my own pose, but it wasn't working out. I feel as though I need a bit more practice!

So I've decided to find some more ref on statues, and saw this one found in Slovenia...



I'm not recreating it completely, just mainly using it to form a strong enough base mesh for me to add my own stuff to it. Here's what I have so far...



Haven't done much to the limbs yet, been working mainly on the torso and the wings.

Mike8917

A few more details

Vertrucio

You should use real animals as an anatomical reference. Statues, especially old statues are both based off another artists interpretation, but often a less informed interpretation. They didn't have the internet, the greatest repository of imagery ever, to tell them how a big lizard might look.

Anyway, you're going too quickly into high res and anatomy.

Stay at low res, don't subdivide until you have the entire model's proportions correct.

Right now, your proportions are still off and the forms don't flow. You can't really fix those problems at high subdivisions.