new sculpt
polycounter lvl 12
I came home from Christmas break to continue the sculpt I started last month, and having not looked at it for over 2 weeks, I was horrified by the piece of crap I had created.
After the usual artistic self-loathing I decided to start over from scratch; this is where I am right now. I'm feeling better about this one, but any comments would be helpful! I'm still working on refining the forms.. any suggestions would be great
Thanks
Quick question too for others that use mudbox: I'd like to do a local subdivision on this guy to sculpt more details in certain areas, but when I do, I get this nasty jaggy artifact line on the edge of the subdivision. Am I doing something wrong?
After the usual artistic self-loathing I decided to start over from scratch; this is where I am right now. I'm feeling better about this one, but any comments would be helpful! I'm still working on refining the forms.. any suggestions would be great
Thanks
Quick question too for others that use mudbox: I'd like to do a local subdivision on this guy to sculpt more details in certain areas, but when I do, I get this nasty jaggy artifact line on the edge of the subdivision. Am I doing something wrong?
Replies
So you went this far *without* using local subdivisions? Man I whish I had your machine!
As for the jagged edges it's really just the little break from one quad to four quads that is bound to happen. I find out it's really no big deal and most of the time it does not even show up when rendering normalmaps...
Also if you make a global subdivision on the lower-def parts later the seam will disappear. And one final tip you might already know - if you hit space and wait for a couple seconds, viewport performance will reach crazy good levels!
If not and its a fanciful alien/monster thing I'd consider different muscle forms and layouts. Never understood why all bipeds must share the same muscle layout, typically. It's interesting to go ahead and think of more intriguing forms sometimes but then, you have to play up to what people want to see.
From my point of view the multi-arms might look better without the deep valley between the two on one side (more muscle?) and a little less clear-cut between the vertical stacking of eyes. In particular the top set seem to have a different expression to the others - basically what Im trying to say is just make sure the muscles in all eye sockets effect each other and dont seem totally independant.
PS if it IS a post-human disregard my first paragraph.
Apart from all that, how long was your christmas break??!
Pior,
I didn't know that, thanks for the tip! I'll try using spacebar
ImSlightlyBored,
Good point. Let me see if I can alter the musculature a little to make it more unique.
My xmas break was 2 weeks. I came back three weeks ago and have put in a few hours on this sculpt each weekend.
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Never understood why all bipeds must share the same muscle layout, typically. It's interesting to go ahead and think of more intriguing forms sometimes but then, you have to play up to what people want to see.
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Humans have the muscle structure they do because it is the most efficient one for our body type (thanks, evolution!). So if you've got an alien that has an identical physical structure with similar proportions, odds are their musculature will be about the same as well. If you just started laying on extra muscles over a standard human frame, it would probably look pretty silly.
edit: That said, it might look better to have the frontal shoulders appear to come out from underneath the rear shoulders a bit, or at least have the muscles overlap a bit, so they layer eachother a little
The 4 arms looking off like the musculature wont really work that way, normally a lot of the musculature at the torso is used for the arms and with 4 arms it gets hard. Maybe you could make the front arms smaller and but more musculature at the side of the torso, you could also try to connect the shoulders more.
Not very important: the ass is too flat.
Looks great so far man! This gonna end up in-game somewhere, or just as a sweet high poly char?
Humans have the muscle structure they do because it is the most efficient one for our body type (thanks, evolution!). So if you've got an alien that has an identical physical structure with similar proportions, odds are their musculature will be about the same as well. If you just started laying on extra muscles over a standard human frame, it would probably look pretty silly.
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I understand all that, and know it, but my point was such;
We've evolved like that - granted, because of our needs. We've got a constant gravity level, a certain type of terrain, one sun, our distance to the sun, our nature and mathematics scheme is all based on the fibonacci sequence (or golden ratio whatever)
Theres a lot of ifs or whats that can be derived from that.
Would an alien lifeform have had the same needs as us and thus evolved similarly? What of their gravity? What if isnt even gravity there? Theres only so much we can imagine before running in to conflicts in our minds. Not everywhere may have gravity, they may have another force similar but acts totally different - I'm not talking about zero gravity conditions but something completely unique.
The argument can go that of course everywhere has gravity, and absolutely every possible universe has it; science says as much. But our science is based on fundamental constants - take away those constants or reform them as something completely different, then you start getting different results.
What of a lifeform that developed where the governing basis is not fibonacci, not 1, 2, 3, 5, 8 and so on, but something completely different? You'd be left with a lot weirder designs. Shells wouldn't be round and turd like. Turds may still be turd like.
In short I understand what you're saying (and by and large what you say should be considered a rule imo because there are certain things the eye just has to see, because of what we all know) but theres no reason in my mind that anything in our reality has to be a constant. In summary, yeah, the bipedal form and human-like layout of muscles is normally the best to go with on a formal approach - of course, people have to see this and it makes more sense to them to do so - but on a conceptual approach it makes more sense that something else could exist. (to me, at least.)
it occurs to me that I've chatted crap, and that basically if you stick to bipedal form I concede that our structure is always round about the best. I just wanted to clarify my approach, too.
addendum: I'm also aware of the theory that the fibonacci sequence is a constant throughout the universe - hence why its been sent out on so many probes - but if you ask someone to suspend their disbelief then you can change this.
And with that I apologise for going slightly off topic, as I still think this is a very nice sculpt and deserves the attention.
But back to the good stuff. Awsome model. Lot of nice detail in the face, but the body seems simple in comparison.
I reworked the shoulder area a bit, changed the eye layout from 6 to 4, and started editing the anatomy to make it a bit more alien but still retaining some of the traditional biped stuff I like.
I've been upping the details on the body but it's kind of a tough balancing act because I don't want it to become overrun with details. Let me know if you think I need to pull back a certain area, or amp something up to bring the focus there.
I also tried making the front arms smaller but wasn't really digging it so left them the same.
And the ass is a little more plump now
I think maybe something that would help this would be to come up with something that better flows with the characters energy. As is you have the feet have three digits and the hands having 4 seems odd to me. I think removing a finger and changing up the formation of the fingers would be cool or adding another due claw to the feet and changing up the hand formation would work too. I could even see the back arms having different hands from the front as well.
the second pic, there's a lot of fighting for attention at areas like the chest and abs. then again, with textures it might be a whole different thing.
Anyways, the main crit I would give is that it feels a bit short perhaps. I think it would have a much more imposing presence if the legs were slightly longer. Also, I think with your latest update you put too much detail in certain areas like the torso. I think if you just softened the intensity on some of the details that would go a long way to balancing out the look of the sculpt.
Longer limbs, three toes on the feet, softened body details some more again. Still trying to think of something I can do to the head to bring the attention to that area. I'd like to edit the hands to make them more interesting, but nothing's coming to mind.
I moved the head so it got kind of deformed and the spikes aren't placed properly, so that's what's going on there....
thanks for the help
Head:
The cranium is more or less just a swollen/distended human cranium. Think of some more animal/alien/insect geometries.
Make the head spikes longer/curvier for more menace & visual interest.
Vary the size of 1 set of eyes dramatically.
Hands:
Take 1 or more fingers and elongate them dramatically.
Give him a Raptor like single claw?
Bifurcated nails? Sloth Nails?
Back:
Vestigial Tail?
Vertebral bumps?
Vestigial winglets?
Gills or some other respiratory/sensory organs?
Legs/Knees:
Some fatty/folded skin where the angles switch dramatically.
Knee spikes or hardened carapace?
Fourth toe in the back for balance?
Groin:
Some carapace bits?
Alien Quasi-vagina/orifice? (seriously)
Anyway, I think this creature looks pretty awesome as it is and your colors will obviously help you push the viewers eye around where you want it.
Skin texture would be cool(basic tiny wrinkles, scales, etc..), but the scaling back of the rippling musculature worked well.
I'm also with adamlewis on the crotch thing. I like what you had there on the over-detailed version.
I'm not quite sure about the very human hands, but I don't think you should go Giger or anything..
like those ribs. mmm!
Thanks!
It's a bit hard to explain for me since it is very subjective matter but I think your first version (top of the thread) is much more powerful. It comes down to shape rhythm I believe.
Like, you had some great interlocking shapes in your early version, leading the eye from one place to the other from the top of the silhouette down to the feet. For instance my eyes were drawn to the face, then took the slope merging into the arm(s), bounced back to that gentle sexy curve going from the lower pecs, the the abs, to the outside par of the hip, and then *swoosh* all the way down the leg - a great natural vertical rythm, each shape having its own role, at different scales.
Now in your recent version you somehow overlaid another vertical rhythm on top of the original one with these bulges you put along the muscles. Two things bother me... 1: they follow the same top-down pattern hence confuse the originally defined rythm, and 2: their volumes are quite pronounced and sharp, which kindof looses the great feeling of slight underskin fat you originally had.
I guess this is all very subjective tho. Maye you could try to subdivide your mesh one more time before adding these muscle bulges? - it will lock the main shape a bit more in place, hence might prevent clashing rhythms.
Can't wait to see more! We should discuss that IRL, easier :P
[edit] Forgot to mention that on the topthread version, the nicely defined little folds around the armpit contrasting against the bigger muscle shapes gave a great feeling of epic proportions, like a movie creature ; while on the newer version, the character is more wrinkly hence appears smaller, kindof like a warhammer figure rendition of the same monster... somehow!
I decided to hulk him out a bit
There's still a few problematic areas that I want to fix up. If there's anything glaringly off please let me know and I'll add it to my to-do list.
Here's a shot of where I ended up. Could have been polished more, I just ran out of time. Jan 31 is the contest deadline.
Even though I didn't finish it how I wanted I got a lot of good practice out of this and that was my main motivation for entering anyway. The deadline just made sure I kept working at it ;D
I think I might still fix up a few things, pose him in max (finally! no restrictions!) and do a 3d print. I think it could be pretty cool to have a little statue of him.
If anyone's got suggestions for a pose, let me know
I dont even know what to say, but Im completely jealous.
A 3D print would be awesome!
-caseyjones
Spark
Here's just a couple more angles I knocked together.
I probably won't be touching this guy again for a little while, but once I fix up some stuff and pose him and I'll be sure to post an update here
Peace!
only crit i can offer is that the thighs and hips look a bit weak in proportion to the rest of the body. should be an easy fix though.