not bad, but you're going into too much detail. go back and look at haz/scorchio's stuff, and you'll see that they're far smoother and less sculpted. haz for example almost exclusively uses the move tool until the very final stages of his stuff.
anatomically she's way off... but you said stylised so i guess that gives you a free pass?
Back to anatomy practice. Male Torso and shoulders anatomy study. Took me the better part of a day.
I enjoy your work, love the choice of colours in all the pieces.
With this, I don't get a feeling for the rib cage, especially on the back. I find that with myself, If I can get the form of the ribcage and pelvis right, everything else follows relatively straightforwardly. Infact I restarted this assignment because I didnt take it into account enough lol, and it came out much better when I did.
MM, I get your point, but I guess don't think that it's illustrated all to well, and it leaves me confused. I would imagine that any generally average proportioned human would share those lines, so I'm not sure that the exercise of lining them up is worth all that much.
To illustrate that, I loaded in heads from real life, from el scorcho, hazardous, an other amazing artists from the site, even stylized an off angle images. They all line up, more or less exactly how I thought they would.
I hesitate obviously to argue with anyone who's spending their time giving me a personal critique, so in curious as to what other members think about this. Obviously I'm working to get past the head thing, so there is some defacto truth to MMs crit, but I'm not sure the thing with the lines is a good way to diagnose this.
@brwnbread - that's great feedback, thank you, I can see immediately that there is some mass of the ribs that seems deflated. Thanks a ton. Did you like scott eatons anatomy class?
@almighty, I didn't know that about hazardous workflow. Typically I use the clay buildup then smooth or polish down, but I see how that would affect his surfaces. I will keep it in mind.
@brwnbread - that's great feedback, thank you, I can see immediately that there is some mass of the ribs that seems deflated. Thanks a ton. Did you like scott eatons anatomy class?
@almighty, I didn't know that about hazardous workflow. Typically I use the clay buildup then smooth or polish down, but I see how that would affect his surfaces. I will keep it in mind.
lol I haven't done it, I did an ecorche to learn where stuff goes and how it overlaps n stuff
i think it's great that you've got facial proportions "nailed". but it seems like you're in some kind of comfort zone with the way you build your heads that makes them all have this "thing" that makes them read instantly as "yours".
that's not necessarily a bad thing. you're emulating Haz's style at the moment (which is great, his work is amazing). but here's the thing... almost all of his heads are different enough that it's something other than their forms that tell you "that's Haz's stuff". with his work it's the presentation and overall smoothness that give it away, i think. and when you look at the entirety of one of his pieces, there are telltale "lines" that follow through the entire model.
that's not what's happening with your stuff. this is really difficult to crit man, because your work is generally speaking really good strong stuff... i just can't put my finger on why so many faces all seem to share the same traits.
maybe try going for some non-famous faces or something, some really "weird" looking ones? the kind of faces that you'll probably get the responses of "hey man, real faces don't look like that!" for making heh.
pay close attention., they may seem close but they dont line up.
as for Troy's models there are subtle variations he makes to each of the faces he makes, eye shape, cheek bones, head shape, etc combined with his overall execution that makes this work far more unique in his separate pieces. he may have a recognizable style but it is mostly limited to this community because i doubt you would be able to tell his work apart from some of the other great anime-style artworks out there.
also, you only have one human face in that image. look at more face. right now you need to train your eye to break from that similar structure that you are stuck to so much.
all your face models have that long head with eyes, nose, lips, ears all placed in exact same place.
also, some of the same problem persists with your body anatomy but may be i should hold off on any more crits for obvious reasons.
here is a random google search of different faces. some have small foreheads, some have shorter chins, some have longer noses, some with higher eyes, etc.
I agree that the problem is structural, I just don't really agree with the lines over images to diagnose it. I did that while running out of the house (Sunday football at my father in laws house -- someone kill me please) but I guarantee that if I took the time that all well proportioned people would line up like that.
To be clear, I'm not arguing about the problem, I just don't agree about the way it's presented here. I work on the problem as I go about sculpting for projects. I do anatomy sculpts from zspheres and model faces (like this new one) from a qremeshed basemesh that had 200 polygons, so it's not a basemesh problem. In doin the celebrity sculpts too, which helps. It's just something I have to work through, and at the very least I am making a bit of headway, even if very slowly.
At any rate, MM, I really do appreciate the feedback, I hope you don't mind me questioning parts of it. I certainly don't think you're wrong about the overall point you're making.
MM I took the images into photoshop and liquified them. I got rid of the red line proportions finally!
As a side-note MM, and aside from the joke, I know you have a point. You're an amazing artist, and I've learned a lot from your work and that amazing street cop tutorial, which I remember coming out when I was getting into game art and I found it completely nuts.
I think my issue is several fold. Proportions, like you've been pointing out, being one part. Another being a smaller repertoire of features, and an inability to blend those features with the planes of the face, and then also just artistic immaturity, and my way of seeing things getting in the way.
I will keep up the anatomy sculpts while I do other work, and the celebrity and reference sculpts will hopefully help me build a catalogue of features and shapes that I can use. Hopefully just keeping at it and being mindful will help me get to that point where I am creating things as they are, and not how I see them incorrectly, or how I use the tools that are comfortable for me but the ones which are appropriate.
While I do all that stuff I'm going to keep doing more realtime work too though, since I don't think it would make sense for me to put everything on hold until I get this particular area of anatomy correct.
Anyways, thanks again for always popping in, even if sometimes I admittedly find it frustrating, I appreciate it and you're correct.
I want to chime in on the facial proportions talk, here, since this is something I've done first-hand research on.
The lines that MM drew over your models - lines marking eyebrow, eye, bottom of nose, and chin - WILL be at the same places on most adults (at least college aged adults). Regardless of ethnicity and regardless of normal variation. That doesn't mean that all faces look the same; there is of course a massive amount of variation, but a lot of that variation happens 'in between' the major guiding lines of proportions. Things like eye SHAPE (not placement), mouth shape, cheekbone and brow width, jaw width, nose flare, lip thickness, tooth protrusion, etc.
Now, to justify everything I just said, here's why I am pretty damn sure of it:
The website http://faceresearch.org/demos/average has lots of images of people's faces (along with the ability to average them together). This is an incredibly useful tool that I think every artist should know about. ANYWAY, I was trying to convince someone that their head-model had off proportions. Their response was "I don't want a generic/average head". So I went to this website, grabbed about 12 random images, and aligned them in photoshop. I drew the proportion lines, and every single head matched perfectly (except the 3d model). I made a gif of that, with the 3d modeled head at the end, saying 'combo-breaker'. I wish I'd held onto that gif, but I didn't. You can recreate the experiment if you want, just make sure all the photos are taken from the same angle and distance.
@ Yuri - you are going in a good direction generally with most of your anatomy work, so i am just trying to nudge you out of a zone that you seem to be stuck in. i had the same observation problem once and i actually think i still have a lot of observation learning to do. so take my critique with a pinch of salt.
I want to chime in on the facial proportions talk, here, since this is something I've done first-hand research on.
The lines that MM drew over your models - lines marking eyebrow, eye, bottom of nose, and chin - WILL be at the same places on most adults (at least college aged adults). Regardless of ethnicity and regardless of normal variation. That doesn't mean that all faces look the same; there is of course a massive amount of variation, but a lot of that variation happens 'in between' the major guiding lines of proportions. Things like eye SHAPE (not placement), mouth shape, cheekbone and brow width, jaw width, nose flare, lip thickness, tooth protrusion, etc.
Now, to justify everything I just said, here's why I am pretty damn sure of it:
The website http://faceresearch.org/demos/average has lots of images of people's faces (along with the ability to average them together). This is an incredibly useful tool that I think every artist should know about. ANYWAY, I was trying to convince someone that their head-model had off proportions. Their response was "I don't want a generic/average head". So I went to this website, grabbed about 12 random images, and aligned them in photoshop. I drew the proportion lines, and every single head matched perfectly (except the 3d model). I made a gif of that, with the 3d modeled head at the end, saying 'combo-breaker'. I wish I'd held onto that gif, but I didn't. You can recreate the experiment if you want, just make sure all the photos are taken from the same angle and distance.
i see wide variations in lot of the faces in that site. i dont really believe that i actually have to convince someone that facial proportions are not same for any two person. even identical twins can have very subtle variations.
here are two faces from that site. i did this with shape outline, but if i made lines like before then they still would not match up. i see many other faces in that site that i could make the same comparison.
watch how the positions vary for the lot of the features like chin height, lips placement, gap between nose and lips, eyes placement etc.
there are lots of other subtle shape variations but those come after you can actually differentiate that the fundamental proportions are different to begin with.
I was wondering on what your problem with faces was the other day and the recent image postes made me realize it may actually be a problem with features shapes...
take the examples of eyes
the first 3 are yours... the other are from Samus, the real life woman, haz and el scorcho.
Yours are all about the same shape and angle, you coul try twisting them up and not have them so flat, also bulging in the middle like haz does for big stylized eyes...
the difference is kinda like that from -_- to ^_^ if you get what i mean... your faces all seem to have no expression at all like some "famous" actress, the one from twilight which you even referenced for one of your model i think.
You can also see this in most of your lips, they look kind of "sad" facing downwards and with concave sides, you coul try some more voluptous lips by making them bigger in the mid section
^^^^
that's probably the best observational post...
your characters generally have what i call, the Liv Tyler effect. they all look like they're about to burst into tears because someone pierced their heart with a sadness arrow.
FNITrox, I agree with Almighty, that's a good observation and it helps. Thanks.
Decided on a concept (the one they're using for the 2013 arenanet internship), and slowly working.
Stylizing the face is a pain. Not sure with this how to go about it. Did some light concepting using the move tool and minimal painting, not to differentiate the faces just to work with proportions etc.
Let me know which one you think moves in the right direction. Meanwhile I'm gonna study some more stylized works, see if I can't figure out what's going on.
I'm not changing the features, just the orientation, somes of the facial planes, and proportions. When I lock those down, I'll get into the individual features (eyes, nose, mouth etc.)
Had quick couple hours to try and flesh out the concept, see how it all goes together. Worked my way down to the skirt, gotta do legs and feet.
When I'm done figuring out the pieces, I'll start breaking things down and actually sculpting and getting a feel for the character. Just trying to make sure I have all piece present right now.
Hi Gir. I shouldn't have posted, was too early in the concepting to really warrant it. At this point I can still solve 90% of the problems I'm facing with time and study. It's that last 10% that I always need help with.
I did a quick paintover of suggestions you could try when comparing her to the concept art and trying to break the repeat features issue,
its only a quick scribble but gives a few possible ideas
I would say adding tear ducts and curving the outer corner of the eye down will help with the eye shape and adding a bit more fat above the upper lid will make it more natural, the biggest difference will be losing your very distinctiive jawline, it raises too high at the moment and emphasises the chin which is why shes not reading too well from distance. also lowering where the chin starts and widening the lips will help lose the pout look that you have across your models. I would suggest redoing the hair aswell, its too close to your others and the open neck is alot sexier and closer to the concept.
Another thing you could try is adding more volume to the features, its hard to explain but basically its about really studying the female form and knowing where to subtley inflate and deflate features slightly, the mouth for instance in my paintover has the laughing lines near the nose pulled in more and the outer mouth has a slight puff. its super subtle but adds alot to the overall forms, the mouth is super complex when you get down to it so this is tip of the iceberg stuff haha.
Its really tough to break away from repeating yourself through your models, every artist worth their salt goes through it and will fight it until their dying breath. But all you have to do is use lots of reference and analyse your own work constantly. Having a style to your work is great, the next step is bending that style whilst creating distinct and noticeably different characters.
I had it with my eyes and noses looking the same, that was due to me relying too much on my visual knowledge in my head and using too similar references all the time. Now I push and pull the models around more during the lower stages without being too precious and use very distinct references so to assure Im not repeating myself.
shit crazyfool, that's great stuff, and an awesome paintover.
This is exactly what was on my screen when I went to read the posts. I was moving a bit in your direction, but you have a bunch of really good suggestions I will try to incorporate.
the last update feels completely different from your usual work, good job.
something bothering me are the eyes a bit too small or distant from each other
I'm gonna roll this into it's own specific thread soon, but with some tweeking etc here is where I'm at. A much better place than this morning I think.
And in case anyone hasn't seen the concept I'm working from, here it is. I'm too late to try at the arenanet internship I believe, but I'm going to do it anyways because the concept is really cool.
great progress, I did a super quick paintover in my break which may help. only suggestions though
Ive lowered the eyes, smoothed out the chin transition, played with the jawline and tried to remove the puffy face look. The eye issue maybe because you have a very smooth transition in the corner where they meet the nose/brow, it normally goes in a bit here.
check the shape of your nose, i know troy does this a lot, but no one has such a nose, at least i haven't seen someone, like ever where it was that extreme. I#m talking about the distance between the tip of the nose and the philtrum
i could go on and on, no matter how pointy the nose is, the philtrum pretty much always ends up at the same height as the nostrils, it comes down to millimeters - but maybe i'm all wrong and there are people with such a large gap, i just never saw any
I would strongly recommend doing some skull drawings and modeling, and studying the anchors of the face (where there's only skin-on-bone, no fat or muscle) - it will greatly improve your facial work.
As for your body work, try to spend more time on the lower subdivs, the larger masses. Essentially, the main thing I'd focus in your place is skeletal structure, the foundation of muscle and skin, because you build your masses nicely, but not always in the right place.
@ Yuri - you are going in a good direction generally with most of your anatomy work, so i am just trying to nudge you out of a zone that you seem to be stuck in. i had the same observation problem once and i actually think i still have a lot of observation learning to do. so take my critique with a pinch of salt.
i see wide variations in lot of the faces in that site. i dont really believe that i actually have to convince someone that facial proportions are not same for any two person. even identical twins can have very subtle variations.
here are two faces from that site. i did this with shape outline, but if i made lines like before then they still would not match up. i see many other faces in that site that i could make the same comparison.
watch how the positions vary for the lot of the features like chin height, lips placement, gap between nose and lips, eyes placement etc.
there are lots of other subtle shape variations but those come after you can actually differentiate that the fundamental proportions are different to begin with.
I guess I forgot to mention that you should resize the heads to make sure that one image is not smaller than the other.
It's also important to note that these two heads are being shot at somewhat different angles (look at the relationship between ear height and nose height - the white guy has his head tilted back). Regardless, you can see that chin, mouth, nose, and eyes all still match up pretty exactly.
Again, I am not saying that there is no variation in facial shape. There's a LOT! Here's a link, if I didn't post it last time - it illustrates just how much variation there can be in head shape.
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TP_X98a6VRs"]A comparison of Chinese and Western headshapes - YouTube[/ame]
But these specific things - ratio from eyes to nose to mouth to chin, really do not vary that much. It's the SHAPE of the eyes, nose, mouth and chin that vary. Not their placement.
A crooked photo is not a crooked face.
A lot of the time people forget the impact that camera settings and view angle have on a person's appearance.
I'm not sure what your link is supposed to indicate. The tip of her nose is unusally high, yes, but that's pretty much standard deviation. The tip and bridge of the nose go all over, but the corners are anchored to the face. Besides that there isn't much noteworthy. The high nose tip gives an optical illusion that her ears are set unusually low, but they probably are not.
There are certainly some weird faces out there in the world, so if you are intending to model a weird face then feel free to mess with proportions. If you want a face that looks 'pretty normal' then it should have pretty normal proportions.
The reason her nose is high -- whether it works or not is a different issue -- is because that's how it is in the concept art. Not that my sculpt sticks 100% to the concept, but that was my thinking.
@ dirigible - i understand your point about those lines being somewhat consistent give that you ignore the the actual size of head or the scale of the human.
so here is the problem with what you are doing. you are completely ignoring real height of the people. all humans are not same height. some individual organs in humans are sometimes close in size and specially the eyeball is usually 24mm in most humans. now given all that, if you scale up one human to match it to the other then what you are doing is making one person a giant compare to the other. the giant will now have a bigger eyeball compared to the other person.
when i scale up the woman on the right by 120% i am able to match the eyes, nose, and lips close but not exatly yet. even in your image they dont match exactly if you observe carefully. the ears also dont match up most of the time but that is more about camera tilt.
BUT this is all irrelevant in my opinion and because you are ignoring one key aspect, height.
after scaling, the woman on the right now looks like she is either closer to camera or she is a giant compared to the woman to her left. the blue lines snow the approximate scale of the head.
so if i were to follow your logic, then Yuri should be scaling his heads differently to achieve that. but all his heads are equal scale with all features in same locations.
that would only happen if all his characters are the same height. now once again if my eyes dont deceive me, i see all his character at same height.
as i already said before, i did not comment on his body anatomy variations yet. but it is all connected.
now, since this is 3d work it is not necessary to scale his entire character models differently every time he sculpts. however what is important is that he has a good range of proportions to improve anatomy knowledge.
ok, i am getting sleepy so forgive me for any typos etc.
ysalex: i wasn't talking about the height of the nose, its perfectly fine, i was talking about the underside of the nose, between philtrum and tip of the nose, which is shaped very oddly, to broad and ends on thw wrong height. but as said, as opposed to dirigble i don't believe in standardized faces, so it might be a common thing, i just don't know anybody with such a facial feature, and i always saw it more as a style thing troy does pretty often. Your thread is named anatomical practice thread so i thought i would point you to this part
@dirible, nevermind - keep putting this matrix on faces, it doesn't make your point right, in fact it even proves it beeing wrong when you'd look more closely. by the way, not a crooked photo, klaus kleber, search for him, his eyes are on different height, you can rotate the image as much as you like, it becomes even more apperent with less perspective in the photo. however, not part of this thread, so sorry for derailing it.
Neox I don't believe it's a common thing. I think what you pointed out is correct, in that most noses end with little height between the philtrun and the cartilidge at the end of the nose. That said, this is the measurement I was talking about in regards to the concept art. In the concept, she has an upwards facing nose.
I don't mind you guys carrying on in here. Learning a ton from you and MM and the rest. I started a new thread for the girl, so this can go back to being about anatomy. I gave you a thanks in the new thread for your help here. Really appreciate it.
MM, I see what you're talking about.
What I would LIKE to say is
With your specific example, the girl on the left looks much more physically developed than the girl on the right, whose face looks more juvenile (less protruding jaw, smaller nose bridge, proportionally larger forehead). That would lead me to believe that she's either much younger, or otherwise hasn't reached physical maturity. I'd guess she's in her mid teens, while the girl on the left is in her late 20s or early 30s.
I'd LIKE to say that the girl on the left is probably letting her jaw hang open inside her mouth, giving her the appearance of having a longer face.
I'd LIKE to say that but I really don't know for sure, and it kind of feels like I'm grasping at straws.
Neox, you're right. I googled some more pictures of him. He does usually hold his head at an angle, but his face is almost definitely crooked. I though he was simply holding his jaw at an angle, but I guess not. I didn't just randomly rotate his face. I rotated it until other facial features fell on the same line - ear's tragus, nose, and forehead wrinkles. When I did that, his eyes matched up, but his jaw was off. Since it's like that in every picture of him, it leads me to believe there's something up with his jaw. But either way, you're right - his face is still crooked.
You've shaken my faith, but I'm not completely convinced. I'm going to keep an eye out.
Okay I went back to that site an duplicated my test. Here's the results.
5 out of 14 faces failed my proportion test. Does that mean my test is only 64% accurate? Maybe. But what faces failed?
Every female face failed. I drew the lines based on the first face I saw, which was a male face. All the female faces failed, but what's more, they all failed in the same way. Their eyes, nose, and mouth all fell beneath the guide-lines. This leads me to believe that there is a gender difference between male and female facial proportions.
Okay, so maybe my test was only wrong on 2 out of 11 (counting only the male faces).
Now granted, it's hard to tell with complete accuracy, but of the two male faces that failed, the second one (on the right) looks very young. Younger than most of the other models. I'm inclined to say we don't count him, simply because he's much younger than the rest of the models.
So if we take him out, my test was only wrong in 1 out of 10 cases. That fail (the guy on the left) had his eyes line up, but his nose and mouth fell below the guidelines.
So I'd suggest that among people of the same gender, who have reached physical maturity, there is a 90% chance that the face will match fairly well to average proportion guidelines.
Let me know if you feel like you think my reasoning is off.
the location of eyes, nose and lips are in different places in respect to the top and bottom of the heads. this is the case in 50% of all your examples and does not help to prove any common rule. that is the whole point of me pointing that out in Yuri's head sculpts using lines. all his heads have same height top to bottom with features in same place top to bottom.
i dont know what percentage exactly is similar in real life but that has to do more with all of them being human and not some other species.
so yes, your reasoning is off in my opinion based on what i have learned so far.
however, female faces wont match with male faces for obvious reason because they are different genders and and different genders have fundamental feature variations.
With your specific example, the girl on the left looks much more physically developed than the girl on the right, whose face looks more juvenile (less protruding jaw, smaller nose bridge, proportionally larger forehead). That would lead me to believe that she's either much younger, or otherwise hasn't reached physical maturity. I'd guess she's in her mid teens, while the girl on the left is in her late 20s or early 30s.
I'd LIKE to say that the girl on the left is probably letting her jaw hang open inside her mouth, giving her the appearance of having a longer face.
to me they seem both same age and actually the woman on right seems older to me because of her skin texture. different people develop different and that is always the case universally.
Wow, this is some epic and interesting discussion we've got here.
While i agree that there is some average proportions we can use out there, as dirigible has shown, i'm still more on MM's side.
Because even though these average propotions might looks accurate, they remain "average" and don't take into account all the genetic differences present in everybody's body. And this is bound to the nature of genetic itself, where even though everything is made from some kind of "template", there is a random factore we must take into account. There is too the age, height, etc., this kind of stuff MM actually highlighted already that can make a difference.
And this is true not only for the face, but for every part of the body. And if i take the .gif you've posted, we can see differences on every one of these girls/women facial proportions. Yes, these are small, but they remain as important differences.
I see these common proportion rules you've show more as starting guideline, which are meant to be adapted on each model.
One other thing too, about the fact that woman proportions didn't fit the male proportions overall. Take a look at each gender average skull. This, alone, have a huge impact, because if muscles anchor's position change, the overall shape will change too.
Maybe i'm all wrong too, i'm, in fact, pretty new to anatomy.
Maybe i'm all wrong too, i'm, in fact, pretty new to anatomy.
No, you're right. I think maybe I've been bad at saying what I mean, here.
I absolutely believe in variation between faces. And while I think the lines I drew will fit most people, I do not believe they will always be a micrometer-perfect fit. Things like injury, nutrition, sickness, age, and genetics greatly affect a person's bone structure, not to mention differences that arise from muscle buildup and fat deposits.
My original comment mentioned that I created a gif to convince someone that their face was too far from realistic proportions, and I think that's sort of what I am really getting at. There is such a thing as 'too far' from realistic proportions (assuming you are trying to create a realistic, normal looking face). And I would say that from a raw numbers standpoint, 'too far' isn't much.
Putting the eyes a half-inch out of place on a persons face makes them look really messed up. Changing the ratio of forehead to face a little bit can be the difference between looking 15 years old and looking 25 years old.
I would say that by and large, facial differences are the sum of a lot of smaller differences in shape - not huge difference in proportion. I think the female head gif I made illustrates that pretty well; some of the facial features don't line up with the lines I drew, but they are off by one or two centimeters at most.
And just to reiterate, I have always believed that there are differences in cranial structure from male to female, and even between ethnicities. A couple posts down I linked a video that demonstrate those differences.
EDIT: Though I haven't said it explicitly, yes the proportions of the skull change massively between infancy and adulthood. Age is one thing that I'll admit creates HUGE differences between heads.
I would say that by and large, facial differences are the sum of a lot of smaller differences in shape - not huge difference in proportion. I think the female head gif I made illustrates that pretty well; some of the facial features don't line up with the lines I drew, but they are off by one or two centimeters at most.
by that logic person A might have chin in the same place, it is just smaller than person B and person B might have nose in the same place, it is just taller than person A.
it becomes a matter of semantics, you use the word shape and i use the word proportion.
so we are both making the same point using different words.
Reference image is my wife, and I did her no justice, but I only had 2 hours so whatever.
Tried to put the stuff discussed here to work, but also this is from a reference so I couldn't do some of the intentional stuff, like break symmetry too much or go off-proportioned.
Can't judge much if the side view is correct or not but the face needs some more volume, particularly at the corner of the jaws, and the silhouette needs to be a tad more "boxy", a bit more simple basically.
The lower lip stood out to me the first though. It bulges out a bit too much. Might wanna tone down the crevice in the center.
Overall it seems like you're mixing in a bit of the stock faces from you memory. It seems we all have a particular face we tend to make if not using any guide.
But damn likeness can be hard. I've never even dared doing it in 3D. Would be interesting to see you take this to the finish.
i'd say it definately doesn't look like any of your other sculpts, so that's a big improvement!
I'd like to see a profile view, because I suspect there's some differences from the side. The main issues I see are that her face is a bit too long in your sculpt, I think it should be more compact. move her chin mouth a nose up a bit.
Then I think you went a bit overboard with the lips. The mouth line in the photos is straighter than yours, you went slightly overboard with the ups and downs, and the crease in the bottom lip is perhaps a bit exaggerated. The other thing is the lower cheeks, in the photos there is more mass in the lower cheek, wheras you've added a dimple from her cheek bones which doesn't seem to be present in the photos. I'll show you what I mean, I circled the area that seems to be one form in both the photo and your sculpt. It goes down much further in the photo.
I also drew over the lips, and you can see the photo's lip line is actually quite straight.
Aimbiz and mr. Ace those crits helped a bunch. Mr. Ace I'm going to add a ref of the side of her face, best I have. Despite having a couple hundred photos of the big day, they're all on CD's in my shed so these references I'm using are what were on facebook when I decided to use her as my day-sculpt. I should go out and get the original high-res ones.
Anyways, these are zbrush screengrabs using a shader that isn't mine, I found it online somewhere.
Here is where I'm at:
Here is the main image I've been shooting for, adjusted slightly for the pained smile on her face (she'd posed for a lot of pics by this
pay closer attention to the eyelash and eyebrow shapes, you're idealising them at the moment instead of making what's actually there. there's also a fleshyness around her nose that isn't present in your sculpt, and the same can be said about the eyebrow.
and i'll say it again, DO THIS STUFF IN GRAYSCALE! make all the photos grayscale, sculpt in grayscale, get the volumes right, don't touch polypaint at all until the very end.
and finally, as pretty as your wife is, she isn't symmetrical. work on that.
Thanks Gir, that was quick. When I model I typically do grayscale (or whatever), then paint, but when I do likenesses I tend to switch back and forth. I find it helps give me a sense of things to lay down some base-colors, then go back to the grey to model.
As for the eyelashes, I realize. I had to beef them up a bit to get them to display in the zbrush viewport. Not ideal, but I wanted to check the eyes a bit. Also not an excuse, I realize.
Is that how you do your likeness sculpts? In gray up to the last second? I wish I could sculpt with that kind of control and purpose, to be honest, but sometimes I have to go back and forth to get things right. I'll work on it, always learning.
Finally, i'll get to the asymmetry. I tend to break that centerline as the very last thing, since up to near the end I'm using the x-mirror, especially when I know that the subject has ever so slight asymmetry. Her nose is off center at the bridge (flying binder), and her left eye is just smaller. Also other stuff, obviously, but those are the major ones.
I think the mouth is the most problematic area at the moment, it's not reading the same as the photos. the dimples at the corner of her mouth look a bit severe, and the mouth and chin don't match up to the side view too well at the moment.
What's your process for the eyelashes by the way? That skin material looks nice, do you remember where you got it?
Replies
anatomically she's way off... but you said stylised so i guess that gives you a free pass?
I enjoy your work, love the choice of colours in all the pieces.
With this, I don't get a feeling for the rib cage, especially on the back. I find that with myself, If I can get the form of the ribcage and pelvis right, everything else follows relatively straightforwardly. Infact I restarted this assignment because I didnt take it into account enough lol, and it came out much better when I did.
To illustrate that, I loaded in heads from real life, from el scorcho, hazardous, an other amazing artists from the site, even stylized an off angle images. They all line up, more or less exactly how I thought they would.
I hesitate obviously to argue with anyone who's spending their time giving me a personal critique, so in curious as to what other members think about this. Obviously I'm working to get past the head thing, so there is some defacto truth to MMs crit, but I'm not sure the thing with the lines is a good way to diagnose this.
@almighty, I didn't know that about hazardous workflow. Typically I use the clay buildup then smooth or polish down, but I see how that would affect his surfaces. I will keep it in mind.
lol I haven't done it, I did an ecorche to learn where stuff goes and how it overlaps n stuff
i think it's great that you've got facial proportions "nailed". but it seems like you're in some kind of comfort zone with the way you build your heads that makes them all have this "thing" that makes them read instantly as "yours".
that's not necessarily a bad thing. you're emulating Haz's style at the moment (which is great, his work is amazing). but here's the thing... almost all of his heads are different enough that it's something other than their forms that tell you "that's Haz's stuff". with his work it's the presentation and overall smoothness that give it away, i think. and when you look at the entirety of one of his pieces, there are telltale "lines" that follow through the entire model.
that's not what's happening with your stuff. this is really difficult to crit man, because your work is generally speaking really good strong stuff... i just can't put my finger on why so many faces all seem to share the same traits.
maybe try going for some non-famous faces or something, some really "weird" looking ones? the kind of faces that you'll probably get the responses of "hey man, real faces don't look like that!" for making heh.
as for Troy's models there are subtle variations he makes to each of the faces he makes, eye shape, cheek bones, head shape, etc combined with his overall execution that makes this work far more unique in his separate pieces. he may have a recognizable style but it is mostly limited to this community because i doubt you would be able to tell his work apart from some of the other great anime-style artworks out there.
also, you only have one human face in that image. look at more face. right now you need to train your eye to break from that similar structure that you are stuck to so much.
all your face models have that long head with eyes, nose, lips, ears all placed in exact same place.
also, some of the same problem persists with your body anatomy but may be i should hold off on any more crits for obvious reasons.
here is a random google search of different faces. some have small foreheads, some have shorter chins, some have longer noses, some with higher eyes, etc.
To be clear, I'm not arguing about the problem, I just don't agree about the way it's presented here. I work on the problem as I go about sculpting for projects. I do anatomy sculpts from zspheres and model faces (like this new one) from a qremeshed basemesh that had 200 polygons, so it's not a basemesh problem. In doin the celebrity sculpts too, which helps. It's just something I have to work through, and at the very least I am making a bit of headway, even if very slowly.
At any rate, MM, I really do appreciate the feedback, I hope you don't mind me questioning parts of it. I certainly don't think you're wrong about the overall point you're making.
Kept working on, with all the great crits.
MM I took the images into photoshop and liquified them. I got rid of the red line proportions finally!
As a side-note MM, and aside from the joke, I know you have a point. You're an amazing artist, and I've learned a lot from your work and that amazing street cop tutorial, which I remember coming out when I was getting into game art and I found it completely nuts.
I think my issue is several fold. Proportions, like you've been pointing out, being one part. Another being a smaller repertoire of features, and an inability to blend those features with the planes of the face, and then also just artistic immaturity, and my way of seeing things getting in the way.
I will keep up the anatomy sculpts while I do other work, and the celebrity and reference sculpts will hopefully help me build a catalogue of features and shapes that I can use. Hopefully just keeping at it and being mindful will help me get to that point where I am creating things as they are, and not how I see them incorrectly, or how I use the tools that are comfortable for me but the ones which are appropriate.
While I do all that stuff I'm going to keep doing more realtime work too though, since I don't think it would make sense for me to put everything on hold until I get this particular area of anatomy correct.
Anyways, thanks again for always popping in, even if sometimes I admittedly find it frustrating, I appreciate it and you're correct.
The lines that MM drew over your models - lines marking eyebrow, eye, bottom of nose, and chin - WILL be at the same places on most adults (at least college aged adults). Regardless of ethnicity and regardless of normal variation. That doesn't mean that all faces look the same; there is of course a massive amount of variation, but a lot of that variation happens 'in between' the major guiding lines of proportions. Things like eye SHAPE (not placement), mouth shape, cheekbone and brow width, jaw width, nose flare, lip thickness, tooth protrusion, etc.
Now, to justify everything I just said, here's why I am pretty damn sure of it:
The website http://faceresearch.org/demos/average has lots of images of people's faces (along with the ability to average them together). This is an incredibly useful tool that I think every artist should know about. ANYWAY, I was trying to convince someone that their head-model had off proportions. Their response was "I don't want a generic/average head". So I went to this website, grabbed about 12 random images, and aligned them in photoshop. I drew the proportion lines, and every single head matched perfectly (except the 3d model). I made a gif of that, with the 3d modeled head at the end, saying 'combo-breaker'. I wish I'd held onto that gif, but I didn't. You can recreate the experiment if you want, just make sure all the photos are taken from the same angle and distance.
i see wide variations in lot of the faces in that site. i dont really believe that i actually have to convince someone that facial proportions are not same for any two person. even identical twins can have very subtle variations.
here are two faces from that site. i did this with shape outline, but if i made lines like before then they still would not match up. i see many other faces in that site that i could make the same comparison.
watch how the positions vary for the lot of the features like chin height, lips placement, gap between nose and lips, eyes placement etc.
there are lots of other subtle shape variations but those come after you can actually differentiate that the fundamental proportions are different to begin with.
take the examples of eyes
the first 3 are yours... the other are from Samus, the real life woman, haz and el scorcho.
Yours are all about the same shape and angle, you coul try twisting them up and not have them so flat, also bulging in the middle like haz does for big stylized eyes...
the difference is kinda like that from -_- to ^_^ if you get what i mean... your faces all seem to have no expression at all like some "famous" actress, the one from twilight which you even referenced for one of your model i think.
You can also see this in most of your lips, they look kind of "sad" facing downwards and with concave sides, you coul try some more voluptous lips by making them bigger in the mid section
just my 2 cents hope it helps
that's probably the best observational post...
your characters generally have what i call, the Liv Tyler effect. they all look like they're about to burst into tears because someone pierced their heart with a sadness arrow.
Decided on a concept (the one they're using for the 2013 arenanet internship), and slowly working.
Stylizing the face is a pain. Not sure with this how to go about it. Did some light concepting using the move tool and minimal painting, not to differentiate the faces just to work with proportions etc.
Let me know which one you think moves in the right direction. Meanwhile I'm gonna study some more stylized works, see if I can't figure out what's going on.
I'm not changing the features, just the orientation, somes of the facial planes, and proportions. When I lock those down, I'll get into the individual features (eyes, nose, mouth etc.)
Had quick couple hours to try and flesh out the concept, see how it all goes together. Worked my way down to the skirt, gotta do legs and feet.
When I'm done figuring out the pieces, I'll start breaking things down and actually sculpting and getting a feel for the character. Just trying to make sure I have all piece present right now.
decent progress though man.
its only a quick scribble but gives a few possible ideas
I would say adding tear ducts and curving the outer corner of the eye down will help with the eye shape and adding a bit more fat above the upper lid will make it more natural, the biggest difference will be losing your very distinctiive jawline, it raises too high at the moment and emphasises the chin which is why shes not reading too well from distance. also lowering where the chin starts and widening the lips will help lose the pout look that you have across your models. I would suggest redoing the hair aswell, its too close to your others and the open neck is alot sexier and closer to the concept.
Another thing you could try is adding more volume to the features, its hard to explain but basically its about really studying the female form and knowing where to subtley inflate and deflate features slightly, the mouth for instance in my paintover has the laughing lines near the nose pulled in more and the outer mouth has a slight puff. its super subtle but adds alot to the overall forms, the mouth is super complex when you get down to it so this is tip of the iceberg stuff haha.
Its really tough to break away from repeating yourself through your models, every artist worth their salt goes through it and will fight it until their dying breath. But all you have to do is use lots of reference and analyse your own work constantly. Having a style to your work is great, the next step is bending that style whilst creating distinct and noticeably different characters.
I had it with my eyes and noses looking the same, that was due to me relying too much on my visual knowledge in my head and using too similar references all the time. Now I push and pull the models around more during the lower stages without being too precious and use very distinct references so to assure Im not repeating myself.
This is exactly what was on my screen when I went to read the posts. I was moving a bit in your direction, but you have a bunch of really good suggestions I will try to incorporate.
Thanks a ton.
the last update feels completely different from your usual work, good job.
something bothering me are the eyes a bit too small or distant from each other
And in case anyone hasn't seen the concept I'm working from, here it is. I'm too late to try at the arenanet internship I believe, but I'm going to do it anyways because the concept is really cool.
Ive lowered the eyes, smoothed out the chin transition, played with the jawline and tried to remove the puffy face look. The eye issue maybe because you have a very smooth transition in the corner where they meet the nose/brow, it normally goes in a bit here.
i could go on and on, no matter how pointy the nose is, the philtrum pretty much always ends up at the same height as the nostrils, it comes down to millimeters - but maybe i'm all wrong and there are people with such a large gap, i just never saw any
As for your body work, try to spend more time on the lower subdivs, the larger masses. Essentially, the main thing I'd focus in your place is skeletal structure, the foundation of muscle and skin, because you build your masses nicely, but not always in the right place.
Good luck!
I guess I forgot to mention that you should resize the heads to make sure that one image is not smaller than the other.
It's also important to note that these two heads are being shot at somewhat different angles (look at the relationship between ear height and nose height - the white guy has his head tilted back). Regardless, you can see that chin, mouth, nose, and eyes all still match up pretty exactly.
Again, I am not saying that there is no variation in facial shape. There's a LOT! Here's a link, if I didn't post it last time - it illustrates just how much variation there can be in head shape.
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But these specific things - ratio from eyes to nose to mouth to chin, really do not vary that much. It's the SHAPE of the eyes, nose, mouth and chin that vary. Not their placement.
so much for eye placement
http://www.deantoriumi.com/philosophy/graphix/PS%20Preop%20Oblique%20view.jpg
so much for ear placement in correlation with the nose
A crooked photo is not a crooked face.
A lot of the time people forget the impact that camera settings and view angle have on a person's appearance.
I'm not sure what your link is supposed to indicate. The tip of her nose is unusally high, yes, but that's pretty much standard deviation. The tip and bridge of the nose go all over, but the corners are anchored to the face. Besides that there isn't much noteworthy. The high nose tip gives an optical illusion that her ears are set unusually low, but they probably are not.
There are certainly some weird faces out there in the world, so if you are intending to model a weird face then feel free to mess with proportions. If you want a face that looks 'pretty normal' then it should have pretty normal proportions.
so here is the problem with what you are doing. you are completely ignoring real height of the people. all humans are not same height. some individual organs in humans are sometimes close in size and specially the eyeball is usually 24mm in most humans. now given all that, if you scale up one human to match it to the other then what you are doing is making one person a giant compare to the other. the giant will now have a bigger eyeball compared to the other person.
when i scale up the woman on the right by 120% i am able to match the eyes, nose, and lips close but not exatly yet. even in your image they dont match exactly if you observe carefully. the ears also dont match up most of the time but that is more about camera tilt.
BUT this is all irrelevant in my opinion and because you are ignoring one key aspect, height.
after scaling, the woman on the right now looks like she is either closer to camera or she is a giant compared to the woman to her left. the blue lines snow the approximate scale of the head.
so if i were to follow your logic, then Yuri should be scaling his heads differently to achieve that. but all his heads are equal scale with all features in same locations.
that would only happen if all his characters are the same height. now once again if my eyes dont deceive me, i see all his character at same height.
as i already said before, i did not comment on his body anatomy variations yet. but it is all connected.
now, since this is 3d work it is not necessary to scale his entire character models differently every time he sculpts. however what is important is that he has a good range of proportions to improve anatomy knowledge.
ok, i am getting sleepy so forgive me for any typos etc.
let me know if any of this is confusing still.
@dirible, nevermind - keep putting this matrix on faces, it doesn't make your point right, in fact it even proves it beeing wrong when you'd look more closely. by the way, not a crooked photo, klaus kleber, search for him, his eyes are on different height, you can rotate the image as much as you like, it becomes even more apperent with less perspective in the photo. however, not part of this thread, so sorry for derailing it.
:edit: MM thanks
I don't mind you guys carrying on in here. Learning a ton from you and MM and the rest. I started a new thread for the girl, so this can go back to being about anatomy. I gave you a thanks in the new thread for your help here. Really appreciate it.
What I would LIKE to say is
With your specific example, the girl on the left looks much more physically developed than the girl on the right, whose face looks more juvenile (less protruding jaw, smaller nose bridge, proportionally larger forehead). That would lead me to believe that she's either much younger, or otherwise hasn't reached physical maturity. I'd guess she's in her mid teens, while the girl on the left is in her late 20s or early 30s.
I'd LIKE to say that the girl on the left is probably letting her jaw hang open inside her mouth, giving her the appearance of having a longer face.
I'd LIKE to say that but I really don't know for sure, and it kind of feels like I'm grasping at straws.
Neox, you're right. I googled some more pictures of him. He does usually hold his head at an angle, but his face is almost definitely crooked. I though he was simply holding his jaw at an angle, but I guess not. I didn't just randomly rotate his face. I rotated it until other facial features fell on the same line - ear's tragus, nose, and forehead wrinkles. When I did that, his eyes matched up, but his jaw was off. Since it's like that in every picture of him, it leads me to believe there's something up with his jaw. But either way, you're right - his face is still crooked.
You've shaken my faith, but I'm not completely convinced. I'm going to keep an eye out.
5 out of 14 faces failed my proportion test. Does that mean my test is only 64% accurate? Maybe. But what faces failed?
Every female face failed. I drew the lines based on the first face I saw, which was a male face. All the female faces failed, but what's more, they all failed in the same way. Their eyes, nose, and mouth all fell beneath the guide-lines. This leads me to believe that there is a gender difference between male and female facial proportions.
Okay, so maybe my test was only wrong on 2 out of 11 (counting only the male faces).
Now granted, it's hard to tell with complete accuracy, but of the two male faces that failed, the second one (on the right) looks very young. Younger than most of the other models. I'm inclined to say we don't count him, simply because he's much younger than the rest of the models.
So if we take him out, my test was only wrong in 1 out of 10 cases. That fail (the guy on the left) had his eyes line up, but his nose and mouth fell below the guidelines.
So I'd suggest that among people of the same gender, who have reached physical maturity, there is a 90% chance that the face will match fairly well to average proportion guidelines.
Let me know if you feel like you think my reasoning is off.
Judge for yourself if the proportions match up.
i dont know what percentage exactly is similar in real life but that has to do more with all of them being human and not some other species.
so yes, your reasoning is off in my opinion based on what i have learned so far.
however, female faces wont match with male faces for obvious reason because they are different genders and and different genders have fundamental feature variations.
to me they seem both same age and actually the woman on right seems older to me because of her skin texture. different people develop different and that is always the case universally.
While i agree that there is some average proportions we can use out there, as dirigible has shown, i'm still more on MM's side.
Because even though these average propotions might looks accurate, they remain "average" and don't take into account all the genetic differences present in everybody's body. And this is bound to the nature of genetic itself, where even though everything is made from some kind of "template", there is a random factore we must take into account. There is too the age, height, etc., this kind of stuff MM actually highlighted already that can make a difference.
And this is true not only for the face, but for every part of the body. And if i take the .gif you've posted, we can see differences on every one of these girls/women facial proportions. Yes, these are small, but they remain as important differences.
I see these common proportion rules you've show more as starting guideline, which are meant to be adapted on each model.
One other thing too, about the fact that woman proportions didn't fit the male proportions overall. Take a look at each gender average skull. This, alone, have a huge impact, because if muscles anchor's position change, the overall shape will change too.
Maybe i'm all wrong too, i'm, in fact, pretty new to anatomy.
No, you're right. I think maybe I've been bad at saying what I mean, here.
I absolutely believe in variation between faces. And while I think the lines I drew will fit most people, I do not believe they will always be a micrometer-perfect fit. Things like injury, nutrition, sickness, age, and genetics greatly affect a person's bone structure, not to mention differences that arise from muscle buildup and fat deposits.
My original comment mentioned that I created a gif to convince someone that their face was too far from realistic proportions, and I think that's sort of what I am really getting at. There is such a thing as 'too far' from realistic proportions (assuming you are trying to create a realistic, normal looking face). And I would say that from a raw numbers standpoint, 'too far' isn't much.
Putting the eyes a half-inch out of place on a persons face makes them look really messed up. Changing the ratio of forehead to face a little bit can be the difference between looking 15 years old and looking 25 years old.
I would say that by and large, facial differences are the sum of a lot of smaller differences in shape - not huge difference in proportion. I think the female head gif I made illustrates that pretty well; some of the facial features don't line up with the lines I drew, but they are off by one or two centimeters at most.
And just to reiterate, I have always believed that there are differences in cranial structure from male to female, and even between ethnicities. A couple posts down I linked a video that demonstrate those differences.
EDIT: Though I haven't said it explicitly, yes the proportions of the skull change massively between infancy and adulthood. Age is one thing that I'll admit creates HUGE differences between heads.
by that logic person A might have chin in the same place, it is just smaller than person B and person B might have nose in the same place, it is just taller than person A.
it becomes a matter of semantics, you use the word shape and i use the word proportion.
so we are both making the same point using different words.
Reference image is my wife, and I did her no justice, but I only had 2 hours so whatever.
Tried to put the stuff discussed here to work, but also this is from a reference so I couldn't do some of the intentional stuff, like break symmetry too much or go off-proportioned.
So you guys can tear me apart, references I used:
The lower lip stood out to me the first though. It bulges out a bit too much. Might wanna tone down the crevice in the center.
Overall it seems like you're mixing in a bit of the stock faces from you memory. It seems we all have a particular face we tend to make if not using any guide.
But damn likeness can be hard. I've never even dared doing it in 3D. Would be interesting to see you take this to the finish.
I'd like to see a profile view, because I suspect there's some differences from the side. The main issues I see are that her face is a bit too long in your sculpt, I think it should be more compact. move her chin mouth a nose up a bit.
Then I think you went a bit overboard with the lips. The mouth line in the photos is straighter than yours, you went slightly overboard with the ups and downs, and the crease in the bottom lip is perhaps a bit exaggerated. The other thing is the lower cheeks, in the photos there is more mass in the lower cheek, wheras you've added a dimple from her cheek bones which doesn't seem to be present in the photos. I'll show you what I mean, I circled the area that seems to be one form in both the photo and your sculpt. It goes down much further in the photo.
I also drew over the lips, and you can see the photo's lip line is actually quite straight.
Anyways, these are zbrush screengrabs using a shader that isn't mine, I found it online somewhere.
Here is where I'm at:
Here is the main image I've been shooting for, adjusted slightly for the pained smile on her face (she'd posed for a lot of pics by this
And the side ref photo:
and i'll say it again, DO THIS STUFF IN GRAYSCALE! make all the photos grayscale, sculpt in grayscale, get the volumes right, don't touch polypaint at all until the very end.
and finally, as pretty as your wife is, she isn't symmetrical. work on that.
As for the eyelashes, I realize. I had to beef them up a bit to get them to display in the zbrush viewport. Not ideal, but I wanted to check the eyes a bit. Also not an excuse, I realize.
Is that how you do your likeness sculpts? In gray up to the last second? I wish I could sculpt with that kind of control and purpose, to be honest, but sometimes I have to go back and forth to get things right. I'll work on it, always learning.
Finally, i'll get to the asymmetry. I tend to break that centerline as the very last thing, since up to near the end I'm using the x-mirror, especially when I know that the subject has ever so slight asymmetry. Her nose is off center at the bridge (flying binder), and her left eye is just smaller. Also other stuff, obviously, but those are the major ones.
I think the mouth is the most problematic area at the moment, it's not reading the same as the photos. the dimples at the corner of her mouth look a bit severe, and the mouth and chin don't match up to the side view too well at the moment.
What's your process for the eyelashes by the way? That skin material looks nice, do you remember where you got it?