Female Character WIP
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Update: Oh what a long strange trip this has been.
Here is the short of it; I started this 6 months ago, I got better.
Where it is now.
Where it started, it is figuratively a piece of shit.
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I've been working on a female anatomical sculpt for a while, but I've decided I'm going to turn it into a full blown character. I usually can walk away from a piece and come back to see all the problems that I've missed, but it's been a few days and I'm at the point where it looks alright to me. But before I go onto surface detailing, I figured I'd get some outside eyes on it to see what I'm overlooking. The hands and feet are still rough, I usually fix those up at the detailing phase.
And I asked this at GA, but do people think turn tables are a good way too showcase a model? I like how you can make out the form, but it can be a little vague and disorienting. Thoughts?
Thanks in advance.
Update: Oh what a long strange trip this has been.
Here is the short of it; I started this 6 months ago, I got better.
Where it is now.
Where it started, it is figuratively a piece of shit.
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I've been working on a female anatomical sculpt for a while, but I've decided I'm going to turn it into a full blown character. I usually can walk away from a piece and come back to see all the problems that I've missed, but it's been a few days and I'm at the point where it looks alright to me. But before I go onto surface detailing, I figured I'd get some outside eyes on it to see what I'm overlooking. The hands and feet are still rough, I usually fix those up at the detailing phase.
And I asked this at GA, but do people think turn tables are a good way too showcase a model? I like how you can make out the form, but it can be a little vague and disorienting. Thoughts?
Thanks in advance.
Replies
but the face is nice ...i like the paintover...only critique watch out the area under the nose...the noseholes are sticking a bit out ...
Turnaround is helpful I think, lets me see all angles.
Besides the masculine-feminine issues, your proportions are good from the neck-down. The head seems a little big. How old is this character supposed to be?
Here's a paintover to emphasize the facial area which also includes the shoulder and neck, it's not perfect but might help a little...
http://philippefaraut.com/store/reference-casts/female-male-head.html
http://philippefaraut.com/store/reference-casts/female-planes-head.html
This shit is awesome for any 3d modeler. You can still use the thumbnail to get an idea of the proper anatomy. At least so you know how NOT to make your women look like men.
Also do you plan on resolving the feet? It seems like they're a little formless, If you plan on putting shoes on her I probably wouldn't bother, because the general shape looks right and shoes distort feet anyway.
Also has far as turn table stuff goes, it seems okay, I like them because you can see the light move across the form, however for better criticism I think you should still post up basic shots and angles as well.
I suppose I should start off by addressing the "IT'S A TRANNY, IT'S A TRANNY!" comments. Definitely the biggest culprit was the pelvis being too wide in the front and too narrow on the sides. So after some extensive research (ie. pictures of vaginas) I hope that area became a little less gender confused. The other thing that was kind of weird was just the whole way the weight of the lower half compared to the upper half. I fattened her hips and thighs up a bit, so hopefully everything balaces nicer.
As for the face, Eric was right that this is supposed to be tom boyish, which I suppose is the reason some people throw up red flags as it looking male. But do remember that masculine qualities are not exclusive to males. Women can have prominent chins and big noses too, which makes it hard for me to tell if what some of you are saying is "this is anatomically incorrect" or "this is not the the feminine ideal". I appreciate all the comments, but if all characters had perfect features, well that'd be pretty boring.
All that being said, I did reshape it to be less rectangular and I softened the chin slightly, I'll post a close up later when it's further along.
TL: DR version. Vaginas.
Removed for bandwidth
And for more specific comments. And again, thanks to everyone for the comments.
Spatz: Thanks, I went back and fixed the nose issue, hopefully I'll have a close up soon.
Shad0wForce: Somewhere between 15 and 45
Titus S: I appreciate the comment, but I try to not use other artists interpretation of anatomy as reference unless my intent is to replicate their work.
Xaltar: I actually shrunk the boobs, so maybe that helps. And I'm curious, what does the age look to you now?
Neo_God: There is a joke to be made about your mother, but I'm not touching it. And feet and hands are still rough, they are next if people think I've resolved the core body issues.
gammaslam: I wish I had just a few, but I have hundreds of megabytes of references that I've been sifting through. Probably part of the problem is that she is an amalgamation of hundreds of different people.
Now keep it coming, Can always use new eyes to tell me all the ways that I suck.
The skull shape is really throwing me off.
Good progress overall.
And the face, with or without hair, honestly looks like a man to me, a man with a fairly "soft" face, but still a man.
If you're going for a somewhat androgynous character, it's great, but if I just saw a head shot with no info, I would think man for sure.
I think if the purpose is to make a realistic everyday female then the face is pretty good now that the jawline is less square.
That said, the hips are still too thin. They just look totally squashed at the top. Also the upper arms are too short and lower arms too long.
GCMP...are you kidding... :poly132:
the left picture looks like a real person - give her textures and she is great...
widen her hips, give more shape to her calves, thin the ankles slightly. narrow the waist slightly.
women are curvey and even androgynous fems still have more feminine attributes than male
the feet seem really flat like flippers.
The head needs a lot of work, it just looks like 'vaguely' feminine male popstar like phil oakey from the human league
sorry to be harsh . the model does have soem nice bits in and you can obviously model
maybe this helps, the individual parts are not bad, but the overal is off, making it weird.
What you can try is go back to a low sub level and grab the move tool, start pulling out the shoulders, the iliac crest? seems low, get the back of the head fixed, things like that.
Do this in an exaturating way so you step out of your zone,
then when you look back at what you have now, you'll go .. awww why didnt i see that!
I agree. The paintover is far to manga-ish imo. I guess what makes it appear male for the most poeple here are the quiet big nostrils and maybe also the short hair ;-)
I'd say keep it close to what you have but make the neck thinner.
... or you can go the other end of spectrum and tone her up like a boyish athlete.
I disagree. I live in Brighton, England, not only are there lots of hippyish, studenty types with no make up etc, there are lots of lesbians. I see non typical girls everyday, you can still tell they are girls, even those with short hair and no make up and boyish clothes.
The odd lesbo you see, with short hair and no make up and seriously can't tell whether they are a man or a woman, they are the exception.
By the way, I'm someone who appreciates non typical girly girl types, I hate too much make up, I am strongly opposed to fake tits, I don't mind short hair on girls, and I also quite like girls just wearing jeans and a tshirt etc. But the facial structure on this model is more masculine than feminine. Don't get me wrong, it's a good model, but incredibly androgynous, with the face in particular veering more towards masculine than feminine.
Additionally, something is seriously awkward and un-feminine about the ribcage and shoulders. Everything seems very squared and non-gestural and masculine. Neck is huge, back is boxy. Even extremely tomboyish women are still artistically beautiful things, full of gesture lines and curves -> http://mikeresponts.files.wordpress.com/2008/06/kimcouture1.jpg
all that aside, the details of the anatomy and execution of the sculpt are fantastic. I would love to see this shape up into something amazing, just remember that realistic does not mean boring
rumbleshushi: While I agree with you that its definitely cool to push the individuality of a character to make it look realistic, But... I think you have missed the point here. I could be wrong, but it seems that The Boss is trying to LEARN female anatomy by doing this character. Not push the boundaries of what is accepted in society, or even trying to make something incredibly unique.
I believe when the goal is to learn something, in this case Female anatomy. Then you should really push that as far as you can, but also stay within the realm of what is believable. The crits here are very valid, and while GCMP's paintover doesn't make it look more realistic, he does attempt to illustrate how to push the character to look more feminine.
Simply put, when your learning something you don't want to have the attitude, "That's the way I want it to look". The most important thing of being an artist is to identify a problem, and understand how to fix it. So even if The Boss wanted to go for a more non-conventional female, trying to make it look more feminine for practice sake, is likely the best thing he can do.
Anyways, I like the point Rens made about individual parts being good, but all together it is off. All I can suggest beyond what was already mentioned is, keep playing with the anatomy and get lots of references. 3d sk is really good for this. You seem to have a really good handle on sculpting in general so I can't wait to see where you take this.
I've done a lot of work on the body since my last update, but it seems most of the discussion is on the face at this point, so I'll update that first. Again, I'm trying to keep a more masculine feel to the features, so sorry if it's not to the extent that some of you were suggesting. But I did try to soften them slightly so it more clearly reads female.
The biggest difference is actually just changing the expression of the brow. My reference for the eyes had a very serious look to them, so hopefully this softens it up a bit. The other big things is just the shape of the skull and jaw, keep in mind bald women have varying degrees of oblong-ness to their skull, so bear with me. I didn't do a paintover, because honestly it should read without everything on top of it.
So a small update, but does it seem better to anyone?
ivars: thanks for the link, it went right into the bookmarks.
And thanks for all the comments everyone. I am trying to put them to use, so keep them coming.
Brad, I think you might have slightly misinterpreted my post
I was disagreeing with acc's opinion that the model looks like a woman, on the grounds that many women have masculine faces.
I don't think many women do have masculine faces.
My point was, I see girls everyday that are very non typical, but they still very much look like women, a woman's facial structure is different from a man's, and you can almost always tell them apart, make up or no make up etc
That said, I can imagine that you want to cement the femininity. I made you a paintover, but I'm fairly notorious for making lousy paintovers and for having shoddy anatomy, so whatever.
Just with this paintover, the jaw, cheekbones, eye and mouth areas make this model look like a woman, rather than a man. That's a dramatic difference.
But am I the ONLY one that thinks, with the hair paintover, she looks almost exactly like the Heavy Rain chick?? http://talkplaystation.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/heavy-rain_07-08-08_01.jpg (not a bad thing though!) Who, IMO, also has a bit of that masculine appeal to her, even though she's pretty noticeably female.
Your babbling, incoherent double standards come from a lack of 19 years of experience, maybe you will learn :poly124:
Seriously though, lighten up and don't hate on people who are trying to help :icon60:
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Anyway, as someone said all I was trying to do was illuminate the fact that one version looked male and one version looked female. Of course it's always up to the artist how far you take things and it looks like this is heading in a more female direction.
I am looking forward to seeing some textures!
A little bit of fat on her lower belly might help aswell.
A really minor nitpick would be about her boobs. Id make them overlap the chest more rather than sprouting out of it. even relatively small boobs dont just stick out like cones from the ribcage.
I think you need to look at the shape of the legs and the silhouette of the torso
I would day it about 60 percent looking good right now and you could push it a bit more.
The sculpting and modeling technique is nice though
I think the latest head with a texture would pass for female, albeit a slightly masculine one.
I got a bit of time to work last night and made some sweeping changes to a few areas based on peoples critiques. Some areas are still more done then others, but hopefully it's moving in the right direction. And sorry if it seems this is moving slowly, I'm not one to jump to the next stage if I'm not done with what I have. In other words, tweak tweak tweak tweak tweak.
Again, thanks for the all help, I am trying to use it all to some degree.
garriola83: noted and addressed, thanks.
r_fletch_r: I didn't see your post till this morning, but hopefully some of those areas look better now, if not I'll get them on the next pass.
I lowered the breasts a little and made the neck a little thinner
But I'll definitely check out the other things you mentioned as well, thanks.
But even for a skinny chick she seems a little too thin in the profle.
Maybe buff up the chest and butt a little.
I think what slaught is demonstranting is perfect. I second his suggesting to make her a bit thicker from the side. From the front she looks quite nice. And I think thickening her up like that would improve her stance since right now she looks flat.
I think what's making her neck/head look big is that her shoulders are kind of smallish. She looks a little too delicate on the top.
You can go look at the first page to see where it started. Six months ago I thought that was good, now I'm embarrassed by it.
I hope you continue to work on this, add some normal clothes make her feel even more real.
I really love this paint-over, I like this face, it feels so human.
http://img168.imageshack.us/img168/7710/elface.jpg (the pic further up)
something that would fit into Heavy Rain or something. I like where you are going go back a few subdivisions and just work the general shape to get the proportions right,