30 day stylized female face challenge. Looking for feedback

30daysofsculptV

Hello! I've been posting daily sculpts for two weeks into my sketchbook but I realize thats probably not the forum for feedback. I'll post all the ones Ive done so far into this master post and then trickle them out as I work my way through the second part of this month of sculpting.
To not flood the page I'll just post the images but if you want to see the reference for each piece on the page & my notes for each day you can find them here:
https://polycount.com/discussion/235124/sketchbook-30daysofsculpt

Day 1

Reference: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/Ny0GxD by Alina Dikareva

Day 2

Reference: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/Z52PqX by Soff (Chili)

Day 3

Reference: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/9Kr6R by Mioree

Day 4

Reference: https://twitter.com/chenevivmi/status/1409683878525108234 by Mie

Day 5

day 6

Reference: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/LR8R1r by wu shenyou

Day 7

Reference by Unknown. Found on pinterest with no source & tineye gave 0 results </3)

Day 8

Reference: found on pinterest. No artist credited </3

Day 9

Reference: Pretty darn sure this is AI. There's a "produced by" watermark but I can't read it unfortunately

Day 10

Reference: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/1m8vZ by Adam Ryoma Tazi

Day 11

Reference: https://www.instagram.com/p/B_yQ7utjnGs/ by anixie_art

Day 12

Inspired by the general style of Mark Lambert @ https://remenance.artstation.com/

Day 13

Reference: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/0Xl98V by Mercurial Forge

Day 14

And that's the lot of them! Big dump but I figured I'd just get this thread started.

open to suggestions for what to work on/focus on for a piece or two.

kanga

Looks pretty good. Try change your first image to a jpg and see if the preview works.

Alemja

Hey! For a 30 day challenge you're coming along pretty well.

I think the main thing I see that you could work on is better defining the structure of the overall face, not just the individual features themselves. This is very common when doing stylized faces I used to do it myself. What I mean is that with stylized heads a lot of people put focus on the eyes nose and lips, but don't know what to do about the rest of the definind plates like the forehead, cheeks, and jaw, so everything kinds of wind up being soft, sometimes a little blobby but definitely kind of nondescript. It can be hard to parse on stylized faces because the forms can be so subtle but it is one of those things that really helps bring them to the next level, and when I compare some of your faces to the 3D models they are based on I can see that is where the difference lies.

Here is a quick paint over of one piece that compares it to the source. The shapes I have drawn out are defined by the shading, which gives clues to the forms. Even though they are are subtle, they are visible and can help you with defining your own face structure.

Here is a great reference photo set of planes of the head that was provided by a member several years ago:

https://polycount.com/discussion/76733/john-asaros-planes-of-the-head-high-res-photos

What I would recommend trying for your next faces is to get the overall forms down in a very angular fashion to ensure all of the planes and forms feel right, then soften them up.

I hope this helps! Best of luck!

30daysofsculptV

Alemja said:

Hey! For a 30 day challenge you're coming along pretty well.

I think the main thing I see that you could work on is better defining the structure of the overall face, not just the individual features themselves. This is very common when doing stylized faces I used to do it myself. What I mean is that with stylized heads a lot of people put focus on the eyes nose and lips, but don't know what to do about the rest of the definind plates like the forehead, cheeks, and jaw, so everything kinds of wind up being soft, sometimes a little blobby but definitely kind of nondescript. It can be hard to parse on stylized faces because the forms can be so subtle but it is one of those things that really helps bring them to the next level, and when I compare some of your faces to the 3D models they are based on I can see that is where the difference lies.

Here is a quick paint over of one piece that compares it to the source. The shapes I have drawn out are defined by the shading, which gives clues to the forms. Even though they are are subtle, they are visible and can help you with defining your own face structure.

Here is a great reference photo set of planes of the head that was provided by a member several years ago:

https://polycount.com/discussion/76733/john-asaros-planes-of-the-head-high-res-photos

What I would recommend trying for your next faces is to get the overall forms down in a very angular fashion to ensure all of the planes and forms feel right, then soften them up.

I hope this helps! Best of luck!

Hey thanks for the concice feedback! I did a head plane study for todays sculpt:

https://polycount.com/discussion/comment/2790720/#Comment_2790720

Shapes are exagurated and proportions aren't aiming to be directly realistic, more-so just familiarizing myself with the universal planes. These were based on Follygon's workflow for planes but I was going to cross-reference these with other planar heads to see what matches/differs once I'm not so tired and can look at it with fresh eyes.

Let me know if anything sticks out! Looking forward to applying some of this stuff for the next head

30daysofsculptV

Heres another dump from the sketchbook

Day 15

Reference: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/EawqZ0 by Karrah E

Day 16

Reference: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/Evoxm2 Wild Rift Zyra by FafaLei

Day 18

Reference: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/YB1K0X by SUN MAN

Day 19

Day 20

Reference: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/zPAZVw by SUN MAN

Day 21

Day 22

Reference: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/v1kezE  by Anson Tan

Day 23

Reference: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/8b8P9Q by IdeaXu

Day 24

Day 25

30daysofsculptV

Day 26

Reference: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/48z2W4 by Dmytro Bajda

Day 27

Reference: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/Kr2KWX by MashacK

Day 28

Reference: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/JvVRwA by Kirill Senzu

Day 29

Reference: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/Z52PqX by Soff (Chili)

Just one more day to go!

30daysofsculptV

Day 30
Here's just a reminder where we started

And here's today's re-visit of the first piece

Reference: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/Ny0GxD by Alina Dikareva

This has been a fun, exhausting challenge for me but I am so happy I pulled through even if I had a few pushed days.

If someone ends up reading this thank you for taking a peek

Cheers.

carvuliero

All well and done but all this hair and accessories are hiding a lot of flows Make yourself a little test line up just heads and see if their still look ok

There are also common mistakes that are shared by most of them for example:

- absence of cheek bones

- no underchin plane

- base of nose is missing

- huge forehead which has no definition

- philtrum ,ears  have strange shapes

I guess the biggest thing is head structure and to be able to sculpt a proper face is to know each form that create it so my suggestion is to do skull studies also to break face into its big forms [face features] from there each big form has few small forms onto it this will be easiest way to learn them

For expression you have to learn some facial anatomy

30daysofsculptV

carvuliero said:

All well and done but all this hair and accessories are hiding a lot of flows Make yourself a little test line up just heads and see if their still look ok

There are also common mistakes that are shared by most of them for example:

- absence of cheek bones

- no underchin plane

- base of nose is missing

- huge forehead which has no definition

- philtrum ,ears  have strange shapes

I guess the biggest thing is head structure and to be able to sculpt a proper face is to know each form that create it so my suggestion is to do skull studies also to break face into its big forms [face features] from there each big form has few small forms onto it this will be easiest way to learn them

For expression you have to learn some facial anatomy

Hey thanks for the reply. I've struggled a bit with keeping the cheek bones without making the face too "lean" in a way? Like I'll carve them out initially but always find myself adding more and more fat & padding until they are almost gone in a way.

Can you also explain what you mean by base of nose is missing? I presume its some shape/planes but I want to be sure I understand correctly!

All your points are good and super valid. I'm going to keep studying faces and a skull exploration sounds like a fun dive.

I struggle to find motivation in practicing realism but I understand it's a necessary foundation for abstraction, it's very much a thing I just need to suck up and do.

carvuliero

For cheekbones best will be to study few skulls so you can understand underlying structure or you can explore your face in front of a mirror

Base of the nose is part that help it blend with the rest of the face on the reference is dashed red area , you need it to have a proper transition

You can use real ppl and stylized them that should teach you head structure

30daysofsculptV

carvuliero said:

For cheekbones best will be to study few skulls so you can understand underlying structure or you can explore your face in front of a mirror

Base of the nose is part that help it blend with the rest of the face on the reference is dashed red area , you need it to have a proper transition

You can use real ppl and stylized them that should teach you head structure

ah thank you for the draw over!

the study never ends✏️✏️✏️

I'll try some standalone heads like you suggested and reference some real people even if I keep the shapes more stylized

Tits

It's really cool to watch the progress, keep at it!