Recommendations for good realistic 3D human characters/portrait tutorials?

tgm79

I am really impressed by works like this one for example https://www.artstation.com/artwork/3o1oBB or this https://www.artstation.com/artwork/XBnDyl

Do you know any good tutorials that cover in detail this specific workflow? I already have my eye set on few tutorials on Gnomon and Gumroad but I can't say I've searched everywhere.

oglu

Take a pencil and start drawing. Take a brush in zbrush and start sculpting every day for the next 5 years.
Im on it for around 10 years now and still not close to be as good as i want.

There is no magic shortcut just start doing it and never stop.

sacboi

The artist's pipeline covers where you should be looking.

However these hyper-real, micro pore CG busts are extremely advanced examples of what it takes in terms of experience and discipline too finalise, which will in all likelyhood take quite a number years for you to achieve the skill required to execute at a similar level of finesse. So for the forseeable future just focus on small and simple projects then gradually progress from there.

Zot

Hello.

I have a solid base, and have plans to start learning character creation after I finish my current project. But for how many hours should I try to sculpt each day? And is it worth to take a course from SGMA or something about char creation? I saw great works from their students.

Where should I start?

Please help.

oglu

As much time as possible. If i have a good day i sculpt 4 hours after my dayjob. 

How much does a world class pianist practice? Same rules to get a world class portrait artist. 

Alex_J

In the beginning of your training try as many varieties of training as you can. Some people have a certain way of training, other people have another. Try to learn what everybody is doing, and then you'll take the best parts from each to form your own unique way of training yourself. 

So you follow a tutorial or two or twenty, just trying to understand the basic ideas, not copy line for line. Then you do some of your own work when you either feel confident or you've run out of tutorials. Don't worry about the results, it won't be great and nobody cares anyway. You first just need to develop your own way of working that you enjoy. You also need to get comfortable in the medium, making lots of technical mistakes, troublshooting them, so that you can get to a point where you can just sit and make art without having to spend much energy figuring out technical things. If you are just sculpting in zbrush there isn't too much to get in your way, but it's still great benefit to understand whats going on with the geometry behind the scenes.

That right there could easily take you a year of training. Depends on a variety of factors. The important thing is to learn to enjoy the work. The more you enjoy it, the more time you'll spend doing it. And time investment is the only way to buy skill. 

If you are putting in a lot of time but not seeing the return, don't stress. Just ask why. Look carefully at yourself, just like you do at your art, and just keep experimenting until you find something new that works. This is persistence. 

sacboi

All well and good signing up for courses or following tutes etc...just a friendly reminder, that 'passion' and/or 'motivation' can be fleeting if one is at the beginning of their apprenticeship due in part of a hard won lesson learnt over my time spent working in this medium. Is that attaining some modicum of self-discipline is an essential attribute to have when the going gets tough or put more simply 'when you don't feel like it'