Trying to get good fast (Crits welcome!)

Sunseaker

Hello!

I'm trying to get one or two new portfolio pieces done in the next few months. The snag is, I have never sculpted humans before, only creatures. It's going to be a challenge!

This is a WIP of what I have so far, could anyone give me some feedback on what I should work on next, or any obvious mistakes I'v overlooked before continuing? Even basic anatomy and proportions. I'd really appreciate it! I can't even decide if her arms are too short or too long depending on the angle ha ha.

Brian "Panda" Choi

Why are her arms crooked upwards at the elbow?  That doesn't reads as a relaxed A pose.

Sunseaker

Hi Brian! That's a good question. I sculpted it with a bend so I wouldn't lose the elbow, but yeah, it's a weird position. I will straighten it out. Thank you!

bkost

Hey Sunseaker, the wrist should align the with bottom of the pelvis when rotated down. That's a simple way to check for the correct length

Sunseaker

Thank you bkost! That is a useful guideline, I will remember it in the future! Looks like I'm going to be fixing arms tonight haha.

Sunseaker

Hello again, I did a bit more work but I realised I was just noodling around and redoing the same stuff over and over. Namely the face. I took the buttons off for now as they were the wrong sort. Are the arms too long now? I will keep working on it but I'm a little lost on what to do next

Sunseaker

Woah, two weeks later and it's not much different, this is going to be even harder than I thought. I'm going to keep at it though! Maybe in another 2 weeks it will be finished. (How do faces work, still a mystery) Any tips for improving it?

bkost

You'll need to pick up tutorials, books, and workshops if you want to have an understanding of human anatomy. Try starting out with Rafael Grassetti's gumroad work. Next would be to dive into Scott Eaton's anatomy courses, he provides an exhaustive study into human anatomy.

Collect lots of resources and use PureRef. Keep at it and pump through as many character studies as you can

Alex_J

Adding on to bkost here... exposure and repetition. Spending a long time on a single character is good if you just really want to push the quality based on what you already know. But to learn fast, better to make many characters, just hitting the key primary and secondary forms and not going further than that. Detailing takes too long and doesn't teach you as much. Learn something small but new from each one, then in the next repeat what you've learned and add one more new thing. Accretion is the word.

Exposure comes from, as mentioned, just soaking up as much info you can from many different teachers. Reading critiques of others work is great resource as well. Not as many professionals critique as used to, so going back through the years is great as well, just to get more exposure from different people.

For this character, first thing jumps out to me is same issues I have with my recent work. Poor facial structure around the orbital area. Doesn't look flat out wrong, just lacking some subtle detail from the underlying bone structure. Clothing is a little stiff and lifeless. Not bad character by any means, but I think the things holding it back may be best picked up from doing a dozen or so 2-10 hour anatomy studies, then coming back with what you've learned.

And remember, Slow is smooth, and smooth is fast. So don't rush yourself, take time to learn thoroughly. If getting job ASAP is goal, fastest way will be focus singularly so all energy goes into one specialty.

Sunseaker

Thank you both bkost and BIGTIMEMASTER! That all seems like really sound advice. I'v really been struggling to get anywhere with this model, I will leave it for a while as I do some research. Just bought Grassetti's tutorial on Gumroad! I guess I know what I'm doing tonight haha! 

Sunseaker

Hello! I took a break from that model and started something new and got carried away. I think I deffo got faster at the very least. I threw some polypaint on and did some quick renders.

Could I just ask if you guys see any huge problems before I attempt to retopo it? I'm not really sure where to start with re-topography, I'v only done some real basic things a long time ago and this is considerable more complex. 

Heres a photo of the v cool armour I based it on for reference, my renders came out too blue but I'm going to redo it all properly in Substance. Hopefully...