bad ass merc character

awesome welles

here is a quick test ive been working on recently taking a break from stylised character art and had my first proper try at sculpting a realistic character.

so i went for a smoking aces style merc here it is after 3 days of sculpting



heres the full body the legs have barley been worked into so exscuse the roughness.

Cap Hotkill

The masks reminds me of the Soldiers from Planet Terror.

The overall look of it looks very muddy, I would go down a few levels and refine more the shapes. it looks like if you started sculpting from a very high subdivision level.

awesome welles

there isnt a huge amount of sculpting detail its all just very basic at the moment so it wont look defined this is only a short amount of work so far

Hazardous

awesome welles wrote: »

there isnt a huge amount of sculpting detail its all just very basic at the moment so it wont look defined this is only a short amount of work so far

Maybe so man, but Capt H is right. How long youve sculpted at this point has no bearing on the point hes making. Turning down your sibdivs and trying to get as much form out of your poly's as possible will make you look far less like one of those noobs who cranks things up to a bajillion pollies and exposes a massive weakness in form / anatomy knowledge.

Get it solid, then subdivide, rinse repeat. The reason for doing things this way is to avoid getting caught up in the sculpting /smoothing /sculpting / smoothing workflow - it will take you much longer to get where you want to go unless you really know what your doing.

Good luck!

tristamus

All things said before me are things I'd pay heed to. As far as my two cents: The most important thing right now is you focus less on the little details (Like you have been with the vest / straps / nades) and focus more on correct anatomy. I don't do characters, but I can tell right away that those feet are just way off.

There's no reason why you won't be able to fix all these things though. Just take some steps back (subdivisions wise and more) and re-evaluate the shapes, etc.

Addieo

The folds in the bottom of the t-shirt look wrong on the bottom render, not sure if it's been said. I like the look of the character at the moment. Some good items attached to the suit.

awesome welles

right then guys thanks very much for the crit ive gone waaaaay back and finnished the anatomy abit more any more crit will be more than appreciated,

thanks btw addieo as nice as crit is thats also apprectiated



thanks for the crit on the legs guys but the legs have barley even been touched and the feet havnt even been looked at yet.
let me make the mistakes before you correct them yer :P

and this is the back

awesome welles

quick face update

awesome welles

quick update had to restart thanks to all my files corupting all at once but heres a new render

Bart

His back muscles are very very wierd. They stick out too much. Try smoothing it out again and add new clay very smoothly to build up a very subtle muscle flow. Hope that helps

odium

He looks a lot like Duke Nuken sat in a microwave.

Its not bad, its just that your basic forms are totally off, and it would be better time spent if you stopped detailing stuff that isn't even needed yet and instead looked at some anatomy refs.

Rockley Bonner

I know your going to cover up the anatomy with stuff but I would go over it again. I see some imaginary rob leifeld muscels in there, most noticeable; the 10 pack abs and double lats. lets just say this, the onely acceptable area is the kneck head and chest.

When studying anatomy pay the closest attention to insertions and origins of the muscles and how they weave and overlap each other. This will result in understanding the muscles as individual dynamic shapes and sculpting/drawing them much more acuratly instead of portraying them as pads as you have done here.

awesome welles

thanks guys that helps alot more the refrence i was using is abit odd looking at it second time its a really old book i picked up that doesnt seem very accurate on second glance but the whole "pads" comment really makes it stand out moer than anthing they dont flow really and that was trying to hard to reach definition that wasnt even there in the first place ill take another crack at the anatomy

Rockley Bonner

I know youve already probobly heard this before but picking up a bodybuilding magazine is very helpfull. Not becasue you should make your charachters like body builders but that some of the muscles you can onely see on a person with rediculus vascularity and mass than, say, a fitness person (like all 3 muscle bellys in the chest and both musle bellys in the bicepts). In those guys you can realy see the muscles weave and snake. I found that bodybuilding magazines gave me a better understanding of anatomy than those medical anatomy pictures on the internet everyone reffers too.

awesome welles

thats actually a great idea ill pick some up tomorow

Hoopla!

his wang is awesome

Rockley Bonner

I second the wang!

awesome welles

right well the old pice was a huge pile of poo
so im older and wiser now, and have decided i wont let this beat me and ive started again

here is my 3 days worth or retrying

awesome welles

well aware the jeans are terrible btw they took about 5 mins to quickly rough up but yer any crit is welcome

KazeoHin

The detailing on the clothing/armour is good, but the organic bits don't match up in terms of detail. Try to focus on the face, and sculpt some good detail there, and use that experience to 'flesh-out' the rest of the skin. good work so far!

awesome welles

thanks zazeo yer the face is really not good, but im going to go alot further into detail with both head and body such as veins and scars and some actual musle structure to the face

thanks for the crit im building a folder of face refrence as we speak

GooDaddy

Looks great!

awesome welles

haha

awesome welles

quick update

Roepetoepa

Hey man good start, but id have a second look at the hand, they look very thin from sideview.
I would also redo the wrinkles on the pants, you should really consider assymetrica wrinklesl because now they feel very unnatural.
also maybe give him a more aggresive face, pull up the nose and make it bigger and give him bigger lips ,loose the babycheecks...
Maybe have a look at the main character from Gears of war, he has a real badass face
Good luck with it mate, looking forward to seeing the end result

awesome welles

Roepetoepa wrote: »

Hey man good start, but id have a second look at the hand, they look very thin from sideview.
I would also redo the wrinkles on the pants, you should really consider assymetrica wrinklesl because now they feel very unnatural.
also maybe give him a more aggresive face, pull up the nose and make it bigger and give him bigger lips ,loose the babycheecks...
Maybe have a look at the main character from Gears of war, he has a real badass face
Good luck with it mate, looking forward to seeing the end result

thank you for taking the time to have a good indepth crit of my work mate
appreciated but i totally agree with the hands and the face im gonna completley redo i really hate it

i just threw basic detail onto the trousers till i get all his pads and holsters and stuff on him cos they'll need redoing aswell

but thanks for pointing out the hands they stick out like a sore thumb now (no pun intended)

awesome welles

quick update ive started sculpting some faces away from the merc i was working on to try and get a face that better fits his character

awesome welles

update

Jeremy-S

Ok, here comes a serious crit, that might sound harsh, but it isn't meant that way. It IS meant to help you, so remember that.

All the forms you're showing here are wrong. You seem to have the idea of what you want, and some basic knowledge of the program, but you're sorely lacking in artistic know how. You seem to have the noob disease, where you have all these great ideas in your head, and a burning desire to make them a reality, which is a great thing, btw. It'll fuel your desire to get better.

You need some refs of the actual muscles, how they interact with each other, their placement, what they're for, all that. Not just how they look on a body builder, but how they look under the skin. Here's an example. Also, NEVER make up your own muscles. If you're not sure, image search for reference. Made up muscles read wrong on EVERYTHING



A tip that's been explained already here but warrants repeating, forget details. Work on your proportions, then anatomy, then move on to the rest of it. One thing I used to do that helped me a lot was limit myself to 1 million polys. My computer was stinky way back when, so I couldn't import anything over 1 mil polys into Max, so I had to work with that number. If you do that, it can limit you in a good way, that will force you to rethink what you have, and how to make it better. It can force you to focus on what REALLY matters. Proportion, anatomy, form, weight, the basics. If you can do that with a mil poly's, your work will look better when you take that limit away.

You're getting MUCH better from even the first post, so don't give up. You seem to be on the right track, just concentrate on the basics, get those nailed down, and you'll see a WORLD of difference in your work.

MainManiac

oh my god your new head looks exactly like humans from WoW

awesome welles

frell wrote: »

oh my god your new head looks exactly like humans from WoW

hah after that comment its back to the drawing board :P

awesome welles

Jeremy-S wrote: »

Ok, here comes a serious crit, that might sound harsh, but it isn't meant that way. It IS meant to help you, so remember that.

All the forms you're showing here are wrong. You seem to have the idea of what you want, and some basic knowledge of the program, but you're sorely lacking in artistic know how. You seem to have the noob disease, where you have all these great ideas in your head, and a burning desire to make them a reality, which is a great thing, btw. It'll fuel your desire to get better.

You need some refs of the actual muscles, how they interact with each other, their placement, what they're for, all that. Not just how they look on a body builder, but how they look under the skin. Here's an example. Also, NEVER make up your own muscles. If you're not sure, image search for reference. Made up muscles read wrong on EVERYTHING



A tip that's been explained already here but warrants repeating, forget details. Work on your proportions, then anatomy, then move on to the rest of it. One thing I used to do that helped me a lot was limit myself to 1 million polys. My computer was stinky way back when, so I couldn't import anything over 1 mil polys into Max, so I had to work with that number. If you do that, it can limit you in a good way, that will force you to rethink what you have, and how to make it better. It can force you to focus on what REALLY matters. Proportion, anatomy, form, weight, the basics. If you can do that with a mil poly's, your work will look better when you take that limit away.

You're getting MUCH better from even the first post, so don't give up. You seem to be on the right track, just concentrate on the basics, get those nailed down, and you'll see a WORLD of difference in your work.

thank you for taking the time to crit my work so honestly its really appreaciated my next piec will be infnatly beter or ill eat my hat

youve just motivated me to do better work. thank you

awesome welles

i can already see the improvments hah the old one makes me embarased just to look at it :P

thanks for the crit everyone, crit is welcome on this piece but its nothing special only been working on it for a day

CheeseOnToast

You've improved drastically over the course of this thread. This new head still has a few problems, but you've paid a lot of attention to mid-level detail which is a huge step forward. A typical noob mistake is to build the biggest shapes then go straight for the pore/wrinkle detail, but you've managed to avoid that.

I'm guessing that the ears are still work in progress so I won't comment on them. The mouth has a typical "fish-lip" look I see in a lot of beginners' work. In this case, I think it's caused by the fact you're working from reference of Mickey Rourke. Check out some images of people that haven't had their lips artificially inflated. In particular, pay attention to bottom lip. Don't confuse the colour change between the flesh of the face and the flesh of the lips as being a hard geometry edge. It's actually a soft transition near the corners of the mouth.

awesome welles

thanks mate yer i took what you said into account and changed the lips you couldnt have been more correct

hows this?

Jeremy-S

Huge improvements, man. Like CheeseOnToast said, there's some problems, but you're still very early on in your learning process. It's the improvements that matter right now, and you're getting a lot better.

Are you using references? You don't have to make it look exactly like your reference, but having them on hand for thing like certain parts of the character is a good idea.

But nice improvements so far, keep it up. *thumbs up*

awesome welles

quick update

awesome welles

lildragn

It's awesome to see you plugging away at your work knowing you need to learn... Love the fact that you've come to grips with that, it's very rare. That being said, you've certainly come along way and taking heed to crits in this thread is helping!
One thing I wanted to mention in addition to everything said, is step back to your lower levels of subdivision, you'll constantly have trouble getting your forms correct by sculpting at the level you're currently on, at this point in your WIP, I should still be seeing faceted faces in the screen grabs - forget the pores, forget the wrinkles e.t.c concentrate on the bone structure under the skin, really try to nail that. Keep going man.

~t

awesome welles

awesome welles

update

mjackson126

Your update is an improvement, but it still lacks the structure needed in a good head sculpt. I don't get a sense of a skull under there. I think you should always look for certain boney landmarks to hang fat, muscle, or skin from. Landmarks such as cheekbones, the brow ridge, etc. Keep going and try to imagine what the skull looks like under all that stuff. At least that seems to work for me. Good luck man and keep on pushing.

awesome welles

its been a few days but here is a new update, I took all the advice into account and smoothed a lot of it out and just went for basic structure at round about sub'd 5,6.7 hope this is better than the last

crit is more than welcome

awesome welles

quick texture update crit is welcome

LRoy

Nice man. Pretty huge improvement from your first version.

awesome welles

another texture update, thanks for the kind words lroy