What should i learn/practice ?

Mehdi_Fr

Hi , like most people here my goal is to get into the industry (as a character artist ) i've been learning sculpting for +9 months now and i got to the point where im confuse and doubting myself , and the feeling of giving up is back to me again .. the problem is i don't know if im heading to the right way !!  people been telling me that this progress i did is great but i dont feel like it is !! i feel like im lost and doing nonsense

also i got overwhelmed about the amount of informations of character artists and i dont know what to do ..
what are the things i should practice ? what's ur advices ? how should i approach this ? and the last question does these 3 recent practice i did will help me improve and get to my goal or they are leading me to another path? 

HarlequinWerewolf

Hey, I totally get being overwhelmed coming in to this industry. Your sculpts are really nice! Way nicer than my early ones were    

Right now, I would recommend learning the rest of the pipeline, whether for games or film. It's very rare to get hired on sculpts alone, you'll usually be expected to be capable of doing the entire pipeline of character creation. (High poly -> low poly -> unwrapped -> textures -> in-engine renders) Yeah, your sculpts are nice, but can you do the rest? Can you retopologise a character with good topo for animation? Can you create nice textures that are realistic/stylised/painted? Can you create clothing? I would dig in to these topics next and find a concept you want to replicate

Mehdi_Fr

HarlequinWerewolf said:

Hey, I totally get being overwhelmed coming in to this industry. Your sculpts are really nice! Way nicer than my early ones were    

Right now, I would recommend learning the rest of the pipeline, whether for games or film. It's very rare to get hired on sculpts alone, you'll usually be expected to be capable of doing the entire pipeline of character creation. (High poly -> low poly -> unwrapped -> textures -> in-engine renders) Yeah, your sculpts are nice, but can you do the rest? Can you retopologise a character with good topo for animation? Can you create nice textures that are realistic/stylised/painted? Can you create clothing? I would dig in to these topics next and find a concept you want to replicate

thank you so much , this is very helpfull ! do you know a good tutorial about the entire pipeline of character creation ?

HarlequinWerewolf

Mehdi_Fr said:

HarlequinWerewolf said:

Hey, I totally get being overwhelmed coming in to this industry. Your sculpts are really nice! Way nicer than my early ones were    

Right now, I would recommend learning the rest of the pipeline, whether for games or film. It's very rare to get hired on sculpts alone, you'll usually be expected to be capable of doing the entire pipeline of character creation. (High poly -> low poly -> unwrapped -> textures -> in-engine renders) Yeah, your sculpts are nice, but can you do the rest? Can you retopologise a character with good topo for animation? Can you create nice textures that are realistic/stylised/painted? Can you create clothing? I would dig in to these topics next and find a concept you want to replicate

thank you so much , this is very helpfull ! do you know a good tutorial about the entire pipeline of character creation ?

Hmm, I've kinda picked up stuff over the years, there's not 1 tutorial that'll cover everything, but I'm a big fan of Flipped Normals and this is a super basic intro to the pipeline. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8TiAjV2f8I

Polycount's wiki has some amazing information! I would recommend spending a bit of time have a browse. http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/Character

I would also say try to make something and when you get stuck or need a hand with things, google it and keep going. Once you finish the full character you'll realise there's so much more you could do next time. I personally don't like restarting a character, I'll finish it then take the lessons I've learned into the next project. 

Hope that helps! Feel free to drop a message if you need more help  

Mehdi_Fr

HarlequinWerewolf said:

Mehdi_Fr said:

HarlequinWerewolf said:

Hey, I totally get being overwhelmed coming in to this industry. Your sculpts are really nice! Way nicer than my early ones were    

Right now, I would recommend learning the rest of the pipeline, whether for games or film. It's very rare to get hired on sculpts alone, you'll usually be expected to be capable of doing the entire pipeline of character creation. (High poly -> low poly -> unwrapped -> textures -> in-engine renders) Yeah, your sculpts are nice, but can you do the rest? Can you retopologise a character with good topo for animation? Can you create nice textures that are realistic/stylised/painted? Can you create clothing? I would dig in to these topics next and find a concept you want to replicate

thank you so much , this is very helpfull ! do you know a good tutorial about the entire pipeline of character creation ?

Hmm, I've kinda picked up stuff over the years, there's not 1 tutorial that'll cover everything, but I'm a big fan of Flipped Normals and this is a super basic intro to the pipeline. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8TiAjV2f8I

Polycount's wiki has some amazing information! I would recommend spending a bit of time have a browse. http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/Character

I would also say try to make something and when you get stuck or need a hand with things, google it and keep going. Once you finish the full character you'll realise there's so much more you could do next time. I personally don't like restarting a character, I'll finish it then take the lessons I've learned into the next project. 

Hope that helps! Feel free to drop a message if you need more help  

wow! that wikipage is an eye-opener for me , thank you so much !!

carvuliero

Most cg characters are face and hands rest is covered with cloths/armor/shoes so that should be your primarily focus ,secondary rest of anatomy

If you like to learn whole pipeline use some simple cartoon character that you can finish in a few days

Mehdi_Fr

carvuliero said:

Most cg characters are face and hands rest is covered with cloths/armor/shoes so that should be your primarily focus ,secondary rest of anatomy

If you like to learn whole pipeline use some simple cartoon character that you can finish in a few days

dang , hands are the hardest thing i ever sculpt , thank you for ur help ! ill do the simple character but first i need to practice on hands cuz it's bugging me xd

kanga

If you are aiming at character art and design anatomy should be your number one priority. You have some good stuff going on in the examples above, but also mistakes that are holding you back. The figures look like you are sculpting at too high a resolution. The male figure looks particularly lumpy and the head, arms and legs look pretty incorrect. Artists that make models for games or just straight animation usually model figures in an 'A' pose. The old 'T' pose is mostly for mocap data so 'A' is best. If you haven't already got a second monitor for reference work, get one so you have one for referring to while you work. Starting low resolution and increasing it slowly will give you the best foundation for you figure and help you curing the lumpies. For this polys work best and dynamesh not so much. Being able to increase and decrease resolution of your figure will help. Eventually you should be able to get a pretty good figure from a low resolution which is an important base for higer detail.

There are a number of ways to study anatomy my favorite is to use a 3d app like Daz 3D. You can pose the models, adjust their musculature and adjust their proportions. Best of all you can rotate them around while you work. Also think of muscles going through and wrapping around a skeleton instead of just sculpting them on top of a figure.

Practice naked figures for a while, both male and female. Then start varying age and ethnicity.

Mehdi_Fr

kanga said:

If you are aiming at character art and design anatomy should be you number one priority. You have some good stuff going on in the examples above, but also mistakes that are holding you back. The figures look like you are sculpting at too high a resolution. The male figure looks particularly lumpy and the head, arms and legs look pretty incorrect. Artists that make models for games or just straight animation usually model figures in an 'A' pose. The old 'T' pose is mostly for mocap data so 'A' is best. If you haven't already got a second monitor for reference work, get one so you have one for referring to while you work. Starting low resolution and increasing it slowly will give you the best foundation for you figure and help you curing the lumpies. For this polys work best and dynamesh not so much. Being able to increase and decrease resolution of your figure will help. Eventually you should be able to get a pretty good figure from a low resolution which is an important base for higer detail.

There are a number of ways to study anatomy my favorite is to use a 3d app like Daz 3D. You can pose the models, adjust their musculature and adjust their proportions. Best of all you can rotate them around while you work. Also think of muscles going through and wrapping around a skeleton instead of just sculpting them on top of a figure.

Practice naked figures for a while, both male and female. Then start varying age and ethnicity.

thank you for your feedback ^^