30-Day Skull Sculpting [HELP!]
Hello, I almost never post in Polycount but I have decided to give it a shot! I'm a hardsurface artist who has been doing 3D for a little over 3 years now using Blender and Maya, but recently, I'm slowly shifting towards character art and have started with the fundamentals of sculpting a human skull for understanding the structure of the human face. Whether it's a male or female. However, It already has been 21 days now and I have not improved the way I thought I would, and I'm reading books, and replaying anatomy video courses over and over and tutorials on YouTube, I even know the bones' names and what they are supposed to look like, but, unfortunately, it seems like my sculpting skills are not yet on par. I'm using a Huion Kamvas Pro 20" (2019) Pen Display when sculpting in Zbrush. I want some tips and tricks what should I do or Improve in terms of my sculpting skills? I'm using a lot of skull reference and a 3D Scan for reference as well but I still find it hard to form the shape It's one thing observing and knowing from the reference but It's a whole other thing actually sitting down and sculpting it in Zbrush. What kind of skills do I lack? I'm going to post my results which I have recorded inside Zbrush and uploaded in Streamable.
Day 3
Day 17
Day 21: (As of today, the date of this post)
Replies
I see some good progress there. Coincidently I recently made a resource in the same vein as what you are doing here. I think it might help. But based on what you are describing I think the main thing you are struggeling with is visualizing the 3d forms and breaking them down into simple parts. Essentially you want to work from large to small shapes starting with the obvious a simple sphere. I have a gif showing exactly how I approach this in the materials as well. I'd love to see an update from you if you get around to trying some of this out. Cheers! https://www.artstation.com/artwork/dKLPGA
Hi! Judging from the thumbnails, I would also say you improved during that time. Simply keep practicing and study references - it takes some time.
Could also start making some characters, from blockout to engine, to get the full picture of what is involved. Maybe work of existing concepts in the beginning to focus on the execution and set deadlines to ensure there is an end to projects. Doesn't matter if you move deadlines or don't hit the quality target, the goal is practise and to do better next time. Could use the current artstation challenge as an excuse.
Consider to document, potentially share, your progress, including challenges and questions. That way you have something to look back and compare to in the future and hopefully get some helpful feedback.
Good luck 💪
What you lack is basic understanding of how skull should look like in its major views .Try first raw exercies to get better idea about silhouette and proportion
once you can get that you could add all the complicated structures.All of the examples exepct last one are just a sphere so for basic skull you dont need ton of geo