Some Art Nouveau WIP (now with boobs)

Zwebbie

I want to make a statue for an environment. The idea is this; it's the 21st century in the way the people from 1900 thought the 21st century would look like. That, plus a lot of Art Nouveau. The environment is the entrance room for a factory where (parts of) spacecraft are created.

The statue is a bronze one, symbolizing the great spirit of man doing wonderful stuff and going into space. The ball that's she's holding is going to be an orrery (hence her temporary name GlobeChick).

Anyway, it's my first female, first cloth, it's WIP and I'm generally inexperienced, so I'm humbly asking for critiques

J Randall

Since its Art Noveau I would say beef up and go crazy with the hair, Mucha's stuff hair is all over the place.

The only thing polyflow wise is the cloth on the back of her left leg is somewhat too low, might look better brought more parallel with the surrounding verts and brought in some. Theres something off with her boobs as well. And the hands are kinda flat.

Great work so far keep it up.

Lee3dee

smoothing groups on boobs ftw!

Baddcog

The breasts need to spread out a bit. They look like they just stick straight out of her chest which is fairly unrealistic, they'd hang to the side of the ribcage a bit more.

The hair in front looks really good how it flows down her neck.

The hair in back looks like one big clump that just splits into strands at one spot. Like J.Randall says, go crazy with it. Make it down past her waist in large flowy strands/ make the strands like the one in the front but make them large and make them split closer to head but not all in a straight line across. Make them random, make some wrap around her waist (not all the way around, just the edge curl around)

It's good work though, I like the pose and her face. I think maybe her hands are a little small, her feet a little too big. But I like how the foot is posed.

You could probably put a few more polys in the back of the cloth but the front looks good.

Steve Schulze

Remember your materials. You'd never, ever get a sculpture with such thin details as you've got with the robe and hair. Remember that this thing had to be carved out of a brittle material at some stage, even if the final product is bronze. I'd suggest clumping the hair together into one lump at the back and attaching it to her back. You can have it flowing out as far as you like as long as you're not putting excessive weight on part of your sculpture, but you'd be very unlikely to have thin whisps of hair as you've got now unless they loop around and rejoin the sculpture at the end and even then, they'd need to be fairly chunky. Have a good look at the way sculptures are constructed. If you can, it'd be a good idea to go check out some real ones so you can get a really good sense of how everything works and the little shortcuts and cheats that can be used to allow for more delicate details.

dfacto

I partially agree with jackalblade. The hair in its current form is too thin for bronze and would be the type of thing to break off. The robe however, is fine, and a look at some bronze statues of antiquity will show that even the hair you have is possible if beefed up to be thicker.

http://www.blessingscornucopia.com/hierarchsoftwelveuniversalraysheracles.jpg

My main critique on this at the moment has to be the pose though. She is standing like a stiff store mannequin and the whole piece is robbed of grace. You need to introduce curves, and subtleties in order to give the model some depth, because right now it looks stiff and lifeless. Archaic Greek statues, and some Art Deco ones as well, have that look, but I'm guessing you're going for something more dynamic.

Zwebbie

Cheers guys, 'tis being appreciated. Keep 'm coming

The hair was, and is still, a placeholder, so don't worry. You've all brought up some good points though and I'm sure they'll help me avoid pitfalls. I hope to eventually make hair in the style of Mucha's 'Nature', but with some more hair flowing in the back as well. If it's possible on his busts, then I'm sure it would be possible on a statue.

I'll see if I can close off the drapery somewhere behind her left foot, making it a solid mass; a statue would probably need more than just her two feet (which aren't even wholly on the ground) to keep it from falling over.

I am indeed going for a graceful pose, even if it's not that yet. The hips are now tilted though, which, IMO, make quite a difference. I don't know if I can change the upper part of the body without losing a sense of stability (as she needs to look as if she's carrying a globe with ease, rather than constantly rebalancing and fighting gravity). Anyway, the update. Breasts are now pointing outwards more and the hands are a tad bigger too.



I think the hair is easier to do once I've finished the posing of the body first. Another good reason to do solid hair is to get rid of this bloody smoothing issue.

Baddcog

I'm thinking the foot is too far back, not so much the foot as the whole lower leg. It looks like the knee is bent back a bit.
It might look different from the side though, hard to tell.

Steve Schulze

[ QUOTE ]
I hope to eventually make hair in the style of Mucha's 'Nature', but with some more hair flowing in the back as well. If it's possible on his busts, then I'm sure it would be possible on a statue.

[/ QUOTE ]Thats a good example of how to do the hair. Each strand is attached to the body at as many points as possible with no ends free floating.

As for the drapery, the detail could be applied, but you'd be losing a lot of the extra strength that a solid chunk of material in the base would allow for. Given that even if the sphere is hollow, she's going to be holding up an enormous amount of weight, one would think the artist would have wanted as much strenth in the base as possible.

gauss

nice work man. i really enjoyed your art nouveau test posted previously, and would love to see this done up properly.
most of my crits will be apparent from the doodle i just upped, but i'll point some of them out anyway: i think form wise she's quite feminine and close to the mucha ideal of beauty, but the pose and the overall lines just aren't selling it as well. i adjusted the arms inward and brought the globe down closer to her head--i think it'd be more realistic of a pose for a sculpture, but also makes her seem more relaxed, more feminine.
i'm not all that great at drawing women, but i always seem to get better results whenever S-curves are incorporated. everything should be flowing lines, undulating s-curves--push for exaggeration and you might just end up close to the effect you actually want. as well as the excellent suggestion of tilting her hips, i recommend bringing them forward somewhat as well. you want curvy lines in her silhouette from all angles.
i also thought that the silhouette/hair treatment was fighting against the globe, rather than with it. so she's got a bit of a venus de milo thing going on, and i drew her hair as sort of lifting up and around the globe. push the stylization there plus with some more classical and billow-y looking drapery (much more than i've indicated below) and you'll get that kind of neoclassical style that spoke so much to mucha. remember to go to original sources, look at the... gee, who was it, the pre-raphaelites? i don't even know what that means but it sounds right in reference to art nouveau
anyway i think this is a great project that will net you a wonderful portfolio piece when you're done, and an excellent usable piece to import into UE3 or what have you.

Zwebbie

Baddcog - you're right on that. I'm desperately trying to find a compromise between a walk cycle and the checking-the-warmth-of-the-water-with-the-toes thing.

Jackablade - that's what I'm aiming for; one solid chunk of metal to keep everything upright. Now to find a way to actually close the drapery without it looking too unnatural. You'd be able to see her other leg by looking inside if she were a human being, but that wouldn't be enough to support a statue.

Gauss - Awesome! The test I posted in SWAYWO was to see if I could get the rendering style working. I was satisfied with it, and am now trying to do an environment with it. The guy should eventually populate it.
The arms were a good call. They're changed now, and it looks much better. Will work some more on the hips, but I must admit I'm a tad afraid that everything will look out of balance, as if she'd fall backwards because of the huge ball she's carrying.

I don't agree (yet?) with you on the hair and pose, though. The statue is supposed to represent an optimism in the future. I tried making the left foot a symbol of advancement. "One small step for a man, one giant leap...", that kind of stuff. Yours is much more grounded in the earth, which, while visually appealing, may not quite convey the message as well.

Sort of the same with the hair. I think the hair flowing around the globe feels as if she needs even her hair to help lift it, rather than it being light and graceful. Although it does do a great job of guiding the attention to the top...

Anyway, cheers. I've set your image as desktop background, so I can ponder it some more .

Here's an update. The arms are a bit of a mess at the moment, since they sort of lack elbows, and I'll play around with moving the hips more to the front too. For now:

almighty_gir

i wish she was cupping my ball(s) like that...

Baddcog

That's a great improvement.

The arms look much better now, she is deffinately more relaxed. Looks like you brought her knee out which was the right move, I was kindof vague, but it was her knee, not her entire bottom leg that needed to come out.

Hips look better like that too.

I almost think that one side of the cloth should be up over a hip so it has something to hang on. Right now it kindof looks like it's in the process of falling more than hanging.

Zwebbie

Hair is super duper difficult .

rasmus

Love the chunky lowpoly! Nice work so far.

Blue

I like the direction you're heading with the hair- the large scale curves work. Polygon budget permitting, maybe you could push it a bit further?

Zwebbie

[ QUOTE ]
I like the direction you're heading with the hair- the large scale curves work. Polygon budget permitting, maybe you could push it a bit further?

[/ QUOTE ]

As much as I love that style, it's a bronze statue, and it probably wouldn't hold. Alphonse Mucha himself was much less extravagant with the hair on his bronze busts, and he invented that crazy flowing look.



Ok, this thread might get confusing with all these images that look so much alike, but going for it one last time. Any things I should change before unwrapping?




(Yes, I know the sphere could be optimized, but polygon budget is not a problem here and it's the focus point for an entire room.)

Tulkamir

Well, just a thought on the sphere, you should either lower its poly count or up everthing else's. It looks odd having high poly and low poly assets together like that IMO, try to keep things relatively close in their resolution.

Lookin good though, keep it up man.

pliang

I honestly think at this point most of the details on the sphere should be shifted over to the bum, cloth and definitions on the back...for art nouveau you'd expect to find more roundness to that.