Female Template Body [proportion tweaks and pose]

braintrain

Hi there polycounter,

My goal is to improve and speed up my workflow by constructing human base meshes in a short time and with the help of little to no reference.
So before I tackle hands and feet I hope somebody is interested to comment on my work and point out some mistakes I made. I kind of want to establish this model as future reference for quality when sculpting for mileage again
The torso has benn sculpted from memory and the arms and legs with some anatomical reference. The head is only for completeness.

braintrain

Reworked my model based on some really amazing advice from Vir Norin at CBZ!
Still looking for suggestions so I´d be happy for any advice and critique 

braintrain

Further work and some polishing.
She´s very muscular right now^^ I currently have some problems with my rib cage shape namely the plane break on the front. It doesnt look like much in the picture (left torso is new one) but it makes a noticeable difference in 3D. Green spot marks where I see the rib cage shifting to the back.

Tectonic

Shes looking pretty good. Maybe check your height proportions. her neck seems long and her wrists aren't quite reaching her crotch which makes me think part of her upper body is too long. And from my rough eye-balling it she looks like she's over 8 heads tall (8 being the normal proportion).

Seraphinn

I agree with Tectonic she is a bit too lengthy but i think the problem is the legs. The crotch could do with a bit of flattening as it looks a little like a bulge atm. Her hips could do with a bit of widening and her calfs could do with slightly more curvature. Other than that a pretty good base mesh for sculpting

yukonwanderer

I think her calfs are too big - they basically match her butt. It looks wack.

braintrain

Thank you all for your critique!
I wanted to upload my stuff yesterday but my internet didn´t let me... Therefor I am doing it today which means I only was able to consider Tectonics´s advice.

@Tectonic
Her neck seems indeed a bit long. Reajusted it a little but might not be enough.
And it is true her wrists don´t quite reach the crotch -however, I can´t find any evidence that her torso is too long after reassessing to the grid and comparing to another 8 head reference model.  If you can tell me what makes you think that her upper body is too long I´d be very greatful! Instead I lengthend the arms a bit to get closer to the midline.
She is exactly 8 heads tall btw

@Seraphinn
maybe I went a bit overboard but I was recommended at CBZ to not neglet the mons pubis fat tissue
I think you are right on the hips. This might be the reason why her torso looks elongated. She is super slim atm and looks like a super serious athlete. I have problems where I can´t really widen her hips without making it look artificial or looking completely out of scale for me. Maybe after stepping back from the model for a few days I can wrap my head around this issue.

@yukonwanderer
I agree with you. I should pull back the calfs a bit.

So this is what I worked on yesterday-
mainly trying to fix some grave mistakes on her back and reassessing arms and neck. Unfortunately I won´t be able to continue to sculpt on her till the end of this month.
Tests are right around the corner...




Here is the grid view in case it helps;)



And since there won´t be happening much for two weeks I thought I´d test sketchfab embeding on polycount to share my model:)
model

Cheers! And thank you guys again!

braintrain

So for the past days I was studying the hands and feet trying to wrap my head around the basic forms and the skeleton.
Not easy stuff! I find the hands to be quite expressive and therefore a stiff and flat shaped hand feels unnatural on the figure.

I sculpt the hand spreaded before I change the composure, which brings me to my problem. I can´t seem to understand the thumb area at all.  Either way I model the thumb´s length to feel "right" but then it wouldnt reach far enough when rotating next to the index finger. Or modeling it to reach to the index finger but then looking akward when the hand is spreaded.
Maybe some hand expert can help me on that








For the foot I decided I only need the correct shape and planes (because I am lazy xD and) since in most cases they will be covered by shoes.




The entire figure:
-> I have been spending some time figuring out how to solve the upper body feeling elongated, as @Tectonic mentioned to me, without breaking the proportional guidelines I know. In the end I found that for most 8 head models the waistline lies above the third head line so I increased the hip fat deposits to move the waist up. I hope this solves my problem.

-> For the crotch area as well I didn´t want to neglet what I learned over at ZBC and after looking at some more references I found that the mons pubis greatly differs from person to person.  To remove the "bumpy look" mentioned by @Seraphinn I decided to go for this shape.

Other than that I worked on the legs, reducing the size of the calfs as advised as well.
After spending like forever on the knee and the popliteal space I am still not happy with those parts... they look artificial

Comments and feedback are greatly appreciated!!!

Seraphinn

Looks great to me mate. Tbh if your using it as a sculpting base. I think ur on the mark. Most of the time your characters are going to be all slightly if not massively different. But youve got everything in order here as far as i can see.  The hands being bent is unusual but looks great 9/10 would comment again

Wendy de Boer

If you are making this as dedicated anatomy practice, you should definitely take the time to do the feet properly. When making characters at work, you usually don't have the opportunity to bring the entire body to full detail, so this is a great time to really push your skills on every part of the body. You'll be happy you did it when you have to model a character in sandals.

braintrain

Thank you Seraphinn! You´re right about the hands. For future work they are not ideal.
I have to remake them anyway because I used dynamesh to merge them to the body and therefore lost the crease in the armpits... not the best idea on second guess, haha^^

I agree with you @Wendy de Boer! For an artist in the business it should be essential to know about the entire body since it rises your market value. However for me, this is "only" a hobby. I think I can get away with skipping on some things that I am not too fond of right now;)
I actually plan to do the same thing with the male body as well and then finish off all the parts that I am still missing.

pongstah

I think the arm muscle is too pronounced and oddly bent, but I'm no anatomy expert. The rest looks pretty accurate too me. nice work.

braintrain

Can you tell me what muscle it is that you find too pronounced? Otherwise it´s gonna be hard to find the problem for me.

tda

Hey man, nice work so far! I'm by no means an anatomy expert but the proportions seem a little off right now. I think the main problem is her ribcage is really long which is messing up the boob placement and making her upperarms seem super long too (stretching so her hands can reach her waist). The head feels a little small too and the neck feels a smidge on the long side. I did a quick and dirty photoshop to illustrate what i mean.

I didn't mess with the side view but right now the hips seem like they're a little squashed too (front to back, aka not enough booty), but it could just be a side effect of the long torso length.

pongstah

I think its called brachioradialis, not sure. Sorry if this wasn't much help. Goodluck

braintrain

@pongstah thank you! When I give the arms another pass I will definitely look out for this area.

@tda very cool that you did this! based on that I actually pulled in some real life reference and checked the proportions. What I found is that the length of the torso isn´t too long but the width isn´t sufficient. In any case my model´s head is too small. You have good eyes!
Im not too sure if I should go for your solution. Personal it would fit my taste better shortening the torso, but for this project I don´t want to go stylized yet... also this would mean loosing my 8 head landmarks... difficult, difficult^^

Here´s a screenshot of what I did. Only some basic pulling  and pushing with move brush and mouse. Not meant to be serious!
Also I put down the links to the reference I used.

http://community.fansshare.com/pic45/w/human-anatomy/1200/1285_human_anatomy.jpg
http://www.majouline.com/content/images/thumbs/0000255_panache_sport_sport_short_5024_paars_36_tm_40.jpeg

Thessera

Those eyebrows bother  me .. she looks rly angry XD idk if that's the plan?

also it wouldn't hurt actualy put some more meat on her.. 

she kinda looks like she has anorexia, cuz the rib cage is showing.. 

- Normaly you wouldn't see it..unless a person is rly skinny.

braintrain

@Thessera Thanks for your comment! I actually think the head looks kind of retarded in front view screenshot^^ Dunno why, in 3D it´s totally different. Anyway as I mentioned in the beginning I am really not concerned about the head atm! It´s only there for completeness
For the ribcage. What you are seeing aren´t ribs but the serratos anterior. Ribs would have a steeper angle downwards if that is what you mean?

I worked on the feet and hands, getting down some more volumes and landmarks for the feet and trying to improve on that freakin thumb (still completely lost here)! I also worked on major proportions and the index and middle finger.
Please tell me what you think!

braintrain

I took my sweet time to step back a bit from this project and compared different proportions to find my personal golden middle. It is really weird but it seems my view from "real" life to 3D space becomes quite distorted. Maybe it´s a beginners thing however after spending some time working with new proportions I see the old model in a different light.
I learned a few new things, such as the proportions should change relative to the person´s true height and that the size of the head compared to the body is the main indicator for the entire body size. Before that I was like: "the person should be taller? just scale the mesh a little bit^^" 

Anyway this leads me to my probably last tweak on this model. Sure there´s still much to improve like the arms (they are quite the nightmare for me) and I am not happy with the knee area at all but I think there is no end to that anyway. I want to move on to my next project sculpting the male body and continue to build on the things I have learned here.

For the proportions I pretty much followed @tda ´s advide by bringing down the shoulders and increasing the size of the head. She now comes in at 7.6 heads. I increased the width of the torso, as well as moving up the widest point of the ribcage. Unfortunately I never reached to consider @pongstah ´s advice since the rotation in the arm gave me so much trouble that I decided to continue to practice the arm in a more neutral position with my male model. I gave her some underwear as well to figure out how the breasts should look like when supported by a bra.

For fun I tried to zsphere pose the model though I have to say I don´t know a thing about posing except that the arms shouldn´t be parallel xD For that purpose I tried giving her a more pleasant face so she wouldn´t look like beeing on the verge of smacking you in the face^^ @Thessera





model

Leinadien

Should do the toes.

Tectonic

the hairline on her looks really weird at the moment. try tweaking it a bit.

 

braintrain

Good point! I will try to improve this. Thank you for the reference as well! It´s very helpful!

As far as toes go, I know I know^^ But I decided to get involved with the feet in detail later and maybe sculpt some when I have the proper knowledge

braintrain

I tweaked the hairline a bit. Hopefully this is an improvement over the initial hairline. Otherwise I´d greatly appreciate if you have some more tips for me