Personal Challenge - 9 Busts

Mateus

Hello!

I'm on a personal challenge where I have to make 9 busts, most of them are going to be sculpts with polypaint. 

Critiques are much appreciated  

Finished pieces [9/9]:

Buuldron Spineblade

[ Concept by AJ Nazzaro ] [ More images ]

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Bunny girl

[ Concept by tsuaii ] [ More images ]

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Faeb (World of Warcraft)

[ Concept by Faebelina ] [ More images ]

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Mercy (Overwatch)

[ Concept by Raichiyo33 ] [ More Images ]

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Tyrande Whisperwind (World of Warcraft)

[ Concept by Yao Deng ] [ More Images ]

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Varian Wrynn (World of Warcraft)

[ Concept by Yao Deng ]

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Demon Hunter (World of Warcraft) [handpainted]

[ Concept by Tyson Murphy ] [ More Images ] [ Sculpt ]

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Loish

[ Concept by Loish ]

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Phobs

[ Concept by Phobs ]

Mateus

I'm also working on this demon hunter based on this concept: http://i.imgur.com/r4FubMn.jpg.
The sculpt is done. This one I'm making a lowpoly diffuse-only model which is almost finished, I just wanna try some more things on the painting.




Lowpoly:


(I'm aware of the seams on the tattoos)


-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
EDIT: Edited this post to let the old version of the "Darth Maul" girl here as log of the progress:




----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Mateus

Started working on this one yesterday.
Struggling with the style.
Any tips?



> Concept from Loish.

Mateus

Hello!

Some progress:

Mateus

I think it's ready for polypaint

Mateus

Done... 

MercurialForge

Faved. Showing some good progress on the busts so far. The Loish piece turned out great, you captured the charm of the original for sure! I feel it starts to fall short around the neck and shoulder, could have used a little more definition like in the concept.

As for the Darth Maul girl, she looks good over all, but I feel like everything reads as soft, no contrasting hard forms. Even the jewelry seems rounded and soft. It would benefit from some hard edges here and there. Lastly her face could have done with a little more stylization and pushing of the forms. The concept has some stronger shape reads to the face.

I guess my tl:dr feedback is try to capture some definition and good edges or plane changes where you can.

Can't wait to see the next one!

Tits

Love the loish piece, it's the one with the most personallity of the bunch for sure!
Great work on the other as well, however the darth maul one feels a bit ''dead''

Nomad - Nicolas Pirot

Awesome work there, the colours in the loish one are spot on.
I'd love to see the demon hunter in a strongly lit environment, I reckon It'd look great.

BrendtheCow

Looking good so far! I'm really digging the Loish piece, and I can't wait to see more! :awesome:

Jakub

Looking well. Like the colours on the Loish piece as everyone else

Tomiajayi

Amazing! I love the stylish shape you have going on, and the contrast.

tda

I meant to comment in here the other day but i never pushed post it seems! Excellent progress in here dude, loving all of these. Excited to see more.

Blade113

very nice

karytsukino

Great work here! You made a nice progress in these busts I cant wait to see more! Keep going =D

Mateus

@MercurialForge, thanks for the comments. I can see what you said about the "Darth Maul girl" and I'll  revisit this model and try to improve it. In the begining I had tried to do a more stylized face, but wasn't beeing able to make it work at all. I'll give it another try and post here. Thanks also for the critic on the Loish.

@Tits, thanks for the input! I'll try to improve her.

@Nomad - Nicolas Pirot, yeah, it could look nice. thanks!

@BrendtheCow, @Jakub, @Tomiajayi, thanks guys!

 

@tda, I do the same with many threads hehe. I'm glad you liked them, thanks.

@Blade113, @karytsukino, thanks for passing by.


Here is the lowpoly diffuse-only Demon Hunter based on this concept: http://i.imgur.com/r4FubMn.jpg

Calling it done.

It's different from what we've seen from the WoW Legion previews (muscular and "dirty" versions of night/blood elves), I wanted to make it more clean towards the concept style and the current night elves from the game.  







I wanna try another hand-painted bust in this thread, so critics about the colors/painting are going to be useful for the next one.

Mateus

Did some changes on the "Darth Maul" girl based on the critiques of @MercurialForge

Hope it looks better now:



Thanks

MercurialForge

She looks a lot better. Those subtle changes really helped! This piece now stands much stronger alongside your more recent sculpts! Cheers!

Mateus

MercurialForge said:

She looks a lot better. Those subtle changes really helped! This piece now stands much stronger alongside your more recent sculpts! Cheers!

Thank you

Mateus

- "My son, a terrible darkness has returned to our world..." - 

Working on a new bust, this time Varian Wrynn from World of Warcraft. 

Concept: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/lz1YJ (I'll surely model that Tyrande too. Soooo cool!)

Here what I've got so far:

Aluvay

Wow these are some really great sculpts! 

Mateus

Thank you @Aluvay !

Mateus

Some progress:
I'd like to know if it's in the right direction in general.

Brandon.LaFrance

Such hotness. You're definitely going in the right direction. I would be cautious with the fur, it's starting to get a bit noisy and losing some of the strong shape language that is in the concept. The same could be said about the hair, thought to a lesser degree.The silhouette is fantastic there, but the strands are starting to get a bit loose. The face is spot on! Can't wait to see some color on him.

Mateus

@Brandon.LaFrance , Yeah, I've been struggling with the fur quite a lot. I'll work more on it and the hair as well based on your critics.
Thank you!

tomenjerry

@mateus looking really,really good! I love the face, really strong shapes! I was sondering how do you make the fur?

Mateus

Hi @tomenjerry, I'm using 3ds max to make the base of the "fur". Some patience was needed hehe:

On zbrush I dynamesh it, use some trim-dynamic and hpolish to adjust and then hit the clay-polysh button.

There might be better ways for this, but this was the only one that I could figure out and have worked for me.

I'm glad you're enjoying it. Been following your WoW environment and really loving it! Even made me create an undead character a while back to explore a little bit the map

Wendy de Boer

That's a neat trick you're doing with the fur! Looking good so far.

tomenjerry

@Mateus Thanks! I'll remember that trick for the fur, seems to work really well! Glad to hear you enjoy my WoW fanart. Haha yeas I've created an undead character as well, need to figure out some key locations and stuff.

Mateus

Wendy de Boer , thanks!  More Grommash, please!
tomenjerry,  glad to share!

Mateus

Update on the fur:

future-fiction

This is such a cool challenge to do, really inspirational stuff! Seems like a great way to do loads characters in different styles without having to dedicate months to doing the entire pipeline, picking just one for that is always hard. I kind of want to try too!
The loish one turned out beautifully, definite fave. Your WoW one is looking really strong, the only thing I could suggest improvements on would be the hair. I think its a little noisy right now, I think it would look much better with the same treatment you've given the fur, less thin strands and more chunky.

Mateus

Thanks @future-fiction
Yeah, I feel like doing a lot of different characters sometimes because I get very inspired by other artists or games. But each character takes me tooo long to finish and I got very frustrated on the last one that I did, so a friend of mine suggested this challenge. But it is taking long as well to finish these busts haha. Like, I want to start an anatomy course that I have already paid, but I have to finish these busts first
I'll work more on the hair as you suggested and see how it turns out. 

For now a little update, mainly on the armor and hair (I'll work more on the hair):

GeorgeCrudo

Really loving these man Especially the latest one you're working on.
I'm actually digging the hair. All I'd say is maybe think about making it a bit more angular. Like the two strands in the front seem to get a little fatter and rounder in the middle, I almost feel like it would look more polished if you did an HPolish or Trim Dynamic on them and kept that consistent throughout the strand. That could just be me though
Looking forward to see how it progresses! 

Mateus

@GeorgeCrudo , I did what you said. Thanks

Calling it done.
I've worked more on the hair and did some other tweaks here and there.
Thanks everyone for the support on this one.



I'll leave here a question, since it would be a problem if I needed to rework/fix something on these ZBrush rendered busts later. 

Is there a way to setup in a non destructive way the posing of things in ZBrush? Like, I had to use Transpose Master to pose the head, and the rotate tool to rotate the eyes. But if I had to fix something where I needed the symmetry again, I'd have to undo these posing changes and pose again later for the render. The same goes for all the lighting/shadows setups, because I would have to redo all the rendering passes. It seems that there is no way I can accomplish this same render + photoshop comp if I needed to.  Is there a practical way of doing these things?

GeorgeCrudo

@Mateus Nice man! Came out excellent! 
I'd actually be curious to know the answer to that question as well. This is just a guess and something I'd be curious to experiment with but maybe you can create a new layer on the Transpose Master combined Subtool and do all the posing on that layer. Then if you see changes that need to be made, just turn the layer off temporarily, make the changes on the symmetrical version and then make the posed layer visible again

tda

I love this latest one dude, looks really great. The fur came out sweet, nice technique there! As far as non destructive ways to pose in zbrush @GeorgeCrudo is on the right track, you can use layers.

If you make a clean layer on all the subtools you plan to move before dropping them into transpose master, when you apply the transpose back to the subtools the movement will all be captured in that layer. You can turn that layer off if you want to make adjustments to your base model in it's symmetry pose and turn it back on to bring the pose back. There are drawbacks of course, as soon as you create 1 layer you're now locked into only sculpting on layers, so you need to make a new one for your adjustments and it gets annoying to have to keep fiddling with layers. It's also not a totally perfect solution, if you make modifications without the pose and then turn it back on it's basically like combining 2 morph targets so weirdness happens, depending on the pose you can get underepresentation of your tweaks. It's not that bad tho and AFAIK this is the best you can do.

GeorgeCrudo

@tda That's so cool! I didn't know it would work that way. Gonna have to experiment with that myself

Mateus

@GeorgeCrudo, thanks man, glad you liked it

@tda, interesting, gonna try this technique on the next one. Thanks for the help! Also it's nice to know that you liked the end result.

Mateus

Hello!
Here is some progress of the Tyrande bust based on an illustration by Yao Deng: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/yAe6O

The hair is being a challenge...

Wendy de Boer

Looking cool so far! I feel like the face shapes aren't entirely there yet, have you tried matching a camera view to the concept for easy comparison?

Mateus

Hi @Wendy de Boer
Thank you! I've tried to pay more attention to the shapes and did some slight changes. The illustration has some forms that I find impossible to match if I want them to work from all sides, like the mouth and her right eye for example. I don't know if you were referring to them though.

Wendy de Boer

I was mainly referring to the mouth and the line of the cheek. But yes, sometimes a 2d concept doesn't quite work out in 3d, I understand!

I think the wider cheekbones helped!

Mateus

But do you think it's looking better or should I make it more like it was before? (Speaking mainly of the strands "coming from the forehead")

Wendy de Boer

I think it's looking better, and I especially like the changes you made to the hair shape.

Mateus

That's nice
Thanks!

Mateus

Almost there, the next will be the final render I think.

Mateus

So here are the final images of this bust. 

Composition and some cheating on photoshop:


Some basic BPR renders:


Now I'll take a little break and then choose the next concept

Wendy de Boer

Nice finish! Can't wait to see what you will tackle next.

tomenjerry

@Mateus I love th tirande bust! The only thing I don't like is the nose, I know it's even more stylized than in the original game, but maybe it's a bit too small now? Loving what youre doing here, keep it up!

Tits

Loving the last bust, I agree with tomenjerry that the nose might look a slight too small for my taste but overall it doesn't affect the quality of the sculpt