Sculpting female anatomy. Where to start

StephonE

Hello everyone my name is Stephon. I am trying to get better at zbrush and want to make my own characters. Mainly female. When it comes to anatomy in your opinion(s) what would be a great place to start? I am thinking about starting with doing 20-30 minute timed gesture sculpts in zbrush like the one below. No muscles or anything just gestures to get the pose and shape of the body down. I want to do this for 2 weeks then compare my results to see if I improve and as I get better go from 20 minute gestures to 15 and so on. I think this will make me quicker at sculpting and be a great place to start. I have also included some examples of work I would like to be able to produce one day. I know this may take an extremely long time to get anywhere in terms of getting to a level that I would like to get to. But I am ready for the Journey ahead. I just need some guidance. Thanks

Mr.Moose

Before you do gesture sculpting you need to learn the anatomy. Starting out with 20-30 minute sculpts is setting you up to learn a lot of bad habits.
Pick something, face, arm, leg, torso, learn its anatomy, then do gesture sculpts of that in 20-30 minutes to start. Learn the next piece, the next, then do the entire body. You're going to waste a lot of time if you try to start with gesture sculpts w/out knowing anatomy first
Anyway just my opinion ^.^

StephonE

thanks you are correct will do. This is why I asked wanted to save time not waste it. Love your stream by the way been a long time watcher

kanga

Perhaps sketching figures in 2d while following figure drawing lesson material will also help you. I think this will aid you in seeing the subject matter better. I know I sound like an old record and it has been said often, but if you can wangle some life drawing sessions they can be very useful. There is probably something like this in your community.

wizo

Yo,

  It depends what you've learned up to now, make sure you are have mastered the basic proportions before going into the other stuff. Gesture is fun to do but it is more about animation and posing, for sure it helps ... but you could study some people just standing still and maybe focus more on their shapes and structure, at least it for me I always try doing one thing at a time.

Main Shapes:
Loomis is a solid base, there are many others..just a personal preference here
http://www.paperdollywood.com/articles/andrew_loomis.html

When you've got the basic shapes down, you can start and learn the main bones structure, you can combine that with muscles since they go hand in hand. Good suggestion by mr. moose. Take the arm, study that for a while (maybe a week) then swap to another part, until you've covered the whole body.  If you have money, +1 Scott Eaton's course, by far one of the best teachers!

To recap, this is the order I would go about learning anatomy, a bit like the steps of sculpting,
-Main Shapes  (main proportions)
-Bones
-Muscles

Good luck!

JacqueChoi

dustinbrown said:

If you're able, I always highly recommend Scott Eaton's online courses for folks wanting to learn anatomy.
http://www.dustinbrown.com/scotteaton/

For design principles, Paul Richards' BabeLab is a great resource.
http://babelab.blogspot.com/

x2

StephonE

kanga said:

Perhaps sketching figures in 2d while following figure drawing lesson material will also help you. I think this will aid you in seeing the subject matter better. I know I sound like an old record and it has been said often, but if you can wangle some life drawing sessions they can be very useful. There is probably something like this in your community.

This is good advice I may try this. I am not into 2d art but you never know what can help 

StephonE

dustinbrown said:

If you're able, I always highly recommend Scott Eaton's online courses for folks wanting to learn anatomy.
http://www.dustinbrown.com/scotteaton/

For design principles, Paul Richards' BabeLab is a great resource.
http://babelab.blogspot.com/

Great resources thank you wizo said:

Yo,

  It depends what you've learned up to now, make sure you are have mastered the basic proportions before going into the other stuff. Gesture is fun to do but it is more about animation and posing, for sure it helps ... but you could study some people just standing still and maybe focus more on their shapes and structure, at least it for me I always try doing one thing at a time.

Main Shapes:
Loomis is a solid base, there are many others..just a personal preference here
http://www.paperdollywood.com/articles/andrew_loomis.html

When you've got the basic shapes down, you can start and learn the main bones structure, you can combine that with muscles since they go hand in hand. Good suggestion by mr. moose. Take the arm, study that for a while (maybe a week) then swap to another part, until you've covered the whole body.  If you have money, +1 Scott Eaton's course, by far one of the best teachers!

To recap, this is the order I would go about learning anatomy, a bit like the steps of sculpting,
-Main Shapes  (main proportions)
-Bones
-Muscles

Good luck!

  I will take your advice you are correct I should learn anatomy just like I would learn sculpting. Basic forms first  and so on your advice combined with Mr.Moose's advice has saved me a lot of time and put me on a better path this way I will save the time I would have wasted. Doing it the way I thought would have been beneficial. I have a couple anatomy books and thought that if I can get the form down it would be beneficial. By form I mean just the shape of the body. But that would be dumb because I would be biting off more than I could chew and it would take me much longer than doing what was suggested here.  I will look into all these resources thanks. If you all think of anything else please let me know.