Daily Sculpts

SarahNotu

I just made my account here, so let me know if I'm posting anything in the wrong place )
Constructive criticism, feedback, help is always welcome, let me know what you think always
almighty_girElithenia 's 30 day head sculpt challenge

See you tomorrow!

Elithenia

Looking forward to seeing what you do  

Phoenix995

Great sculpt!
how long did that one take?

SarahNotu

Phoenix995 said:

Great sculpt!
how long did that one take?

Thanks! This took me probably around 4 or 5 hours, I'm not sure really as I just did little bits here and there between work. Definitely too much time to spend on practice but I got attached to this lil guy lol

SarahNotu

Well, life happened - but the daily sculpts start today!
Day 01 complete, let me know if you have any critiques/criticisms
(also let me know if I should be posting these on the challenge's original thread)


Started with the default ZBrush female head for this study
Credit goes to @ elithenia for the reference photos, please find them in their original post
See you tomorrow

SarahNotu

Day 02 and 03 complete (forgot to upload yesterday!), let me know if you have any critiques/criticisms
Day 02


Day 03


Started with the default ZBrush female head for these studies
Credit goes to @ elithenia for the reference photos, please find them in their original post
See you tomorrow 

SarahNotu

Day 04 complete! This was the most enjoyable sculpt so far, had so much fun doing this I probably spent a bit longer on this one than the others :DD


Started with the default ZBrush female head for this study
Credit goes to @ elithenia for the reference photos, please find them in their original post
See you tomorrow 

SarahNotu

Day 05 complete! Really struggled today but got it done


Started with the default ZBrush female head for this study
Credit goes to @ elithenia for the reference photos, please find them in their original post
See you tomorrow 

SarahNotu

Day 06 complete!


Started with the default ZBrush female head for this study
Credit goes to @ elithenia for the reference photos, please find them in their original post
See you tomorrow 

Elithenia

Glad to see you're doing this1
Currently you and @Glynnybob are actively doing it. It is great to see.
And I can see lots of improvements already.

I'd suggest that only working in symmetry for the first 20-30 mins. After that, or once you up the subDiv one level, symmetry is off and you need to start working asymmetrically. 
Faces aren't symmetrical, and it the outstanding factor in your day 4 post really. That's where the likeness comes in.
Use symmetry to get a base or middleground of where you want your polys to be, and then turn it off and start adjusting. 

SarahNotu

Elithenia said:

Glad to see you're doing this1
Currently you and @Glynnybob are actively doing it. It is great to see.
And I can see lots of improvements already.

I'd suggest that only working in symmetry for the first 20-30 mins. After that, or once you up the subDiv one level, symmetry is off and you need to start working asymmetrically. 
Faces aren't symmetrical, and it the outstanding factor in your day 4 post really. That's where the likeness comes in.
Use symmetry to get a base or middleground of where you want your polys to be, and then turn it off and start adjusting. 

Thank you for the feedback! Yes that's sort of how I had been working, and it seems for the past couple days I haven't switched symmetry off so I'll make sure to do that today

Elithenia

If this is subdiv 1 and 2.. I'd actually lower the polycount to at least half again for the first one. You have too many polys to play with, so you can use smaller brushes, which..... you shouldn't be able to. It promotes noodling  

Your main brush to use should be move brush in the beginning to get the shapes before you start using something like claybrush. This is so that it will be more sweeping gestures instead of focusing on details first.
It is one of the things we are trying to eliminate with this.. 
Work with as big of a brush size as you can first. Only lowering it when you have to. Otherwise it is easy to get lost in the details  

Think of it in Primary shapes -> Secondary forms (-> tertiary details)
At the most in this you should get to secondary forms. 

SarahNotu

Elithenia said:

If this is subdiv 1 and 2.. I'd actually lower the polycount to at least half again for the first one. You have too many polys to play with, so you can use smaller brushes, which..... you shouldn't be able to. It promotes noodling  

Your main brush to use should be move brush in the beginning to get the shapes before you start using something like claybrush. This is so that it will be more sweeping gestures instead of focusing on details first.
It is one of the things we are trying to eliminate with this.. 
Work with as big of a brush size as you can first. Only lowering it when you have to. Otherwise it is easy to get lost in the details  

Think of it in Primary shapes -> Secondary forms (-> tertiary details)
At the most in this you should get to secondary forms. 

thanks for the feedback I have generally been working with the move brush as much as I can first before moving to claybuildup but i'll try to push this further today and get as much of the form in with the move brush as I can and try not to push into tertiary details. I'm always tempted to divide and get more detail so I'll resist the urge this time lol

SarahNotu

Day 07 complete! I had a much better time with this one after your advice, @Elithenia !
I stuck to subdiv 1 and use mainly the move brush, maybe 5 or 6 stroke with claybuild up. So much easier to concentrate on primary form like this as I wasn't getting distracted with the details. Please do let me know what you think and thanks again for the input, I am now quite tempted to revisit some of the past days' sculpts


Started with the default ZBrush female head for this study
Credit goes to @ elithenia for the reference photos, please find them in their original post
See you tomorrow 

Elithenia

SarahNotu said:

Day 07 complete! I had a much better time with this one after your advice, @Elithenia !
I stuck to subdiv 1 and use mainly the move brush, maybe 5 or 6 stroke with claybuild up. So much easier to concentrate on primary form like this as I wasn't getting distracted with the details. 

Please do let me know what you think  and thanks again for the input, I am now quite tempted to revisit some of the past days' sculpts

Aaaahhh much better!  
This challenge is not meant for details, that is something you can do when you are working longer on a sculpt. This is meant to be quick and for you to see the differences and similarities between different heads  
This is to focus on Primary shapes first. And potentially, if time allows, to get some secondary forms in. It is to gain confidence in getting a likeness quickly so that you can find the important landmarks and angles of what makes up the reference. 

Don't go backwards! Always move forward. 
Take what you learned to the next one. 
The idea is to keep moving in the direction you want (characters) a short step every day, so that you can build the confidence in finding the forms and in your ability to see and find them. 
These are practice sculpts and don't need to be perfect. Don't go back and change them, as you will be better off with doing a new/extra head instead.

Also, you can delete the teeth from your model, you don't need to worry about the teeth with this   

SarahNotu

Elithenia said:

SarahNotu said:

Day 07 complete! I had a much better time with this one after your advice, @Elithenia !
I stuck to subdiv 1 and use mainly the move brush, maybe 5 or 6 stroke with claybuild up. So much easier to concentrate on primary form like this as I wasn't getting distracted with the details. 

Please do let me know what you think  and thanks again for the input, I am now quite tempted to revisit some of the past days' sculpts

Aaaahhh much better!  
This challenge is not meant for details, that is something you can do when you are working longer on a sculpt. This is meant to be quick and for you to see the differences and similarities between different heads  
This is to focus on Primary shapes first. And potentially, if time allows, to get some secondary forms in. It is to gain confidence in getting a likeness quickly so that you can find the important landmarks and angles of what makes up the reference. 

Don't go backwards! Always move forward. 
Take what you learned to the next one. 
The idea is to keep moving in the direction you want (characters) a short step every day, so that you can build the confidence in finding the forms and in your ability to see and find them. 
These are practice sculpts and don't need to be perfect. Don't go back and change them, as you will be better off with doing a new/extra head instead.

Also, you can delete the teeth from your model, you don't need to worry about the teeth with this   

Thank you! Okay then, I'll keep moving forward  

SarahNotu

Day 08 complete!


(apologies for lower gif quality)
Started with the default ZBrush female head for this study
Credit goes to @ elithenia for the reference photos, please find them in their original post
See you tomorrow 

SarahNotu

Oops, a little late but day 09 complete!


Started with the default ZBrush female head for this study
Credit goes to @ elithenia for the reference photos, please find them in their original post
See you tomorrow 

SarahNotu

Well, I'm a bit behind with these as i've suddenly gotten quite busy, but happy to pick these up where I can as it's pretty fun
Day 10 complete

Started with the default ZBrush female head for this study
Credit goes to @ elithenia for the reference photos, please find them in their original post
See you tomorrow 

SarahNotu

Day 11 complete - almost went back and changed the nose as, from the perspective it's not looking like the reference, but I'm trying to focus less on those teeny tiny detail and more on the overall form so hopefully this still translates


Started with the default ZBrush female head for this study
Credit goes to @ elithenia for the reference photos, please find them in their original post
See you tomorrow 

Elithenia

Getting better and better! 
Glad to see you're focusing more on Primary Shapes and Secondary Forms than the details!  
I saw that one of the photos for one days were missing, so I've updated the links, and all the heads should be there now  

This is a video of day 18 I did when I was doing this challenge.
Don't know if it can help you https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUsE_yVGsu4
It might be that your initial head might be too high poly, because you shouldn't be able to get to the detail stage (which means you shouldn't be able to focus on that, but rather spend your time finding the primary shapes in each case). 

SarahNotu

Elithenia said:

Getting better and better! 
Glad to see you're focusing more on Primary Shapes and Secondary Forms than the details!  
I saw that one of the photos for one days were missing, so I've updated the links, and all the heads should be there now  

This is a video of day 18 I did when I was doing this challenge.
Don't know if it can help you https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUsE_yVGsu4
It might be that your initial head might be too high poly, because you shouldn't be able to get to the detail stage (which means you shouldn't be able to focus on that, but rather spend your time finding the primary shapes in each case). 

Thank you! In today's sculpt (below) I tried remeshing the demo head to around 7k instead of using it at default 13k, as I see in your video your starting mesh seems much lower so I thought I'd copy that
let me know what you think! and thank you for the continued feedback

SarahNotu

Day 12 complete - slowly working through these as I just keep forgetting with other ongoing projects. Won't have access to my pc from the 16th to the 24th of oct so no updates between those dates


Started with the default ZBrush female head for this study (remeshed this time, however)
Credit goes to @ elithenia for the reference photos, please find them in their original post
See you tomorrow 

Elithenia

Much better polycount, however, now don't forget to let go of symmetry too.  

SarahNotu

Day 13 complete - remembered to turn off symmetry this time
 
Started with the default ZBrush female head for this study (remeshed to approx. 7k)
Credit goes to @ elithenia for the reference photos, please find them in their original post
See you tomorrow