I see no use of a skeleton to put muscles onto, seems more like a hassle than a learning process.[/IMG]
I know you're not gonna like this, but I think you are wrong here. Anatomy is ROOTED in the skeleton.
The amount you will learn and grow from knowing the skeleton and then adjusting it and using that to inform your muscle and flesh anatomy will be by leaps and bounds over just doing "outside- in" sculpts over and over.
I am (now, from zack's video) aware every muscle is rooted to the skeleton. I would prefer to draw over an image of a skeleton rather than fiddle with the move and transpose tools to make every muscle is all im saying.
Perhaps a base mesh that looks like an anorexic person would be helpful to build up from, and another alternative.
If you're serious about learning about anatomy then pick [ame="http://www.amazon.com/Atlas-Human-Anatomy-Artist-Galaxy/dp/0195030958"]this book[/ame] up for reals. It's a fantastic book and really helps to break down a lot of the complex forms of the body and musculature. 15 bucks is a small price to pay.
Do you do any sketching as well? Learning how to represent the body in both 2D and 3D at the same time will make you improve far faster than doing just one.
With books theres so many that you can get and too many options, are there any main ones I should get? Id prefer E-books so I dont have to wait (pretty sure amazon has this).
The books are relatively cheap so I guess I could get about 3 or so.
-Sternomastoid is short and has an extreme angle, which means you probably have to move the neck up
-Colar bones should have V shape (the meeting point at the sternum is lower than the shoulders)
-Deltoid shape, needs to be more balanced, front head is too long currently
-The pectoralis major insertion could use more definition (it wraps under the front of the deltoid and should be a visible landmark)
-Where's the ribcage? another landmark that is useful for attaching the rest of the abdominal muscles and "breaks" a lot of the form in that area.
No!!!! Dont stop!!! Thats what I want!!!!! Instead im getting people giving me observation material, if I was that good at observing I would already be perfect at this lol! I need fresh eyes!
Thanks psyk0
While I was waiting I doodled this onto my basemesh, which is sadly probably the best 'full' character ive made in zbrush.
Ok now wheres the actual version of that guide to drawing? It looks fun to read.
Will do though, I have no problem sculpting the entire body at least once a day so doing it more can only be beneficial.
I must be missing something. Im sculpting all of these bodies with references all over my second monitor yet these past few have been getting the same results. Does anyone notice a pattern here? I dont but I hope someone else does.
Oh the doodle.. was not meant to be serious at all and I know I am definitely incapable of anything like that right now. I literally was waiting for replies and had just finished sculpting so I did that and kept adding on.
i would try and focus on proper proportions before starting to sculpt in muscle detail, i have the same problem with trying to include all the necessary muscles before stepping back and looking at the underlying form. also, while your still learning i would suggest trying to stay at a relatively low polycount. basically try and get the figure right before "smoothing" him out, don't worry if you still see facets. take it one step at a time, it pays off in the end. you are definitely improving although i think your giving yourself more of a challenge than you need to be.
keep it up though, im seeing improvement. that "doodle" isn't half bad, so don't let happy cow put you down too much. there is no harm in doodling or sketching or speed sculpting, especially if you think of it in terms of other mediums. you don't see beginning 2d artists sitting down and completing huge finished pieces when they are learning, they start with quick sketches and doodles because working quick and loose is how you are better able to find mistakes and correct them. you dont want to work on a full character only to find out right before retopologizing that you have tons of problems to fix with the underlying form; thats a pain. my "duderz" started out as a quick sketch to get down a form and a personality, and i think it's grown into much more thanks to the help provided by the community. if i would have gone the whole nine yards with him right up front, i would have only accentuated the flaws and had to backtrack in order to fix all of my problems.
Don't try to do it faster because you can't do it right yet.Take your time.
thats a little harsh, i don't see you posting up much of your character work for all to tear apart. it takes cojones to post up work that you feel is great, just to get put down by some random person on the forum.
speed modeling can drastically help your skills as seen by many artists here on polycount, including myself. now while i don't condone quickly modeling out something for your portfolio, something quick and loose for a speedie or something of similar nature is PERFECTLY fine. no one becomes an artist over night, and its ridiculous to assume that someone willing to learn is going to spend hours up hours on one silly little model that will probably get thrown into a random folder in the end.
to my understanding, this is a thread to help frell better understand the human form and muscle structure, so my suggestion would be to step back in subdivision levels for your last character, look at the relation of different parts of the body and try and nail a solid form down first. im sure you'll find that it becomes a lot easier to visualize without all the confusing detail that muscles add. heres something that should help a bit when it comes to relating the size of specific objects in relation to others:
sorry if i hurt your feelings for anything that i said happy cow, but i prefer the route of positive criticism over blunt criticism. i see too much "your terrible, use reference" critiques and i can bet that almost everyone was in the same position at some point or another, and they wouldn't be where they are now without some form of positive reinforcement. keep it up, continue using reference, and stick to simple forms at first, you're getting it :thumbup:
the only thing that makes me mad about you super happy, is that looking at your portfolio it seems as though you shouldnt be dishing out as much shit as you do, but thats just me. I guess its ok to have at least one forum dickhead
And frell, it's slowly getting there, just keep doing studies and do what everyone is telling you to do and you should be fine
well to keep this from being a thread un-related to the original poster i will just a couple things
i never said he should do it "as quick as possible" but spending hours upon hours on something like this (learning) is absurd. and i didnt mean underlying SKELETON, i meant the form of the human figure, minus over-the-top muscles popping out from everywhere. more specifically the correct proportions of the human form, and how each part relates to lengths found elsewhere on the body
This shouldnt turn into a discussion on who said who, but I really dont see anything wrong with what Happy Cow has written. Clearly he has spent alot of thaught and time on his post only to help frell.
putting it bluntly:
if you want to learn anatomy, LEARN ANATOMY. stop posting half baked "doodles" of irrelivent things. stop sculpting a full body at very high subdivisions and then moving on to the next thing before taking crits into account.
and the biggest one of all... stop disagreeing with criticism.
being advised to sculpt over a skeleton was by far the *best* advice in this thread. and you quite blatently just threw it away.
if you want people to take you seriously in future, and to seriously help you, then seriously take on board their advice.
now stop fucking about, and get the basics down. learn to crawl, then learn to walk. give us some 2 division sculpts showing you at least know what a human silouhette looks like, and then move on to muscle form.
Nice conversation guys, ha. No im not discouraged, actually, im more and more eager to impress you guys. After studying ill have a second monitor full of references, my tablet in front of me ready to sculpt some bad ass fuckin naked men, nomsain? But ill be in the mindset of "I got this now" spend 2 or 3 hours on it, upload the image and it turns out theres a bunch wrong with it. So I end up scratching my head wondering what I didnt study correctly.
Right now Im planning to edit my base-mesh to have better base proportions and also mark specific landmarks on the human skeleton to help me in muscle placement.
putting it bluntly:
if you want to learn anatomy, LEARN ANATOMY. stop posting half baked "doodles" of irrelivent things. stop sculpting a full body at very high subdivisions and then moving on to the next thing before taking crits into account.
and the biggest one of all... stop disagreeing with criticism.
being advised to sculpt over a skeleton was by far the *best* advice in this thread. and you quite blatently just threw it away.
if you want people to take you seriously in future, and to seriously help you, then seriously take on board their advice.
now stop fucking about, and get the basics down. learn to crawl, then learn to walk. give us some 2 division sculpts showing you at least know what a human silouhette looks like, and then move on to muscle form.
This comment is the only comment that completely pissed me off. I've only posted one doodle. Im not sculpting at very high subdivisions, I actually set up mass in the first subdivision and end up finishing defining around the 3rd. In the 5th and 6th I try to better define the creases between muscles. Moving onto the next thing before taking crits into account? Really? Your ignorance is starting to hurt my hands. Ill be honest and say I still do suck, but in 3 pages I have noticed a significant improvement and that is enough to prove to me that if I keep at it I can know anatomy like the back of my hand and sculpt it like making a hot pocket by summer. I would love more crits, but I usually wait 24-48 hours between sculpts and Im lucky if I even get one post, so I have to resort to studying alone which obviously is not working for me at this stage.
Love what you did with the facts on the whole skeleton advice scene. I did not blatantly throw it away, while you were on your high horse you apparently stepped over me while I was posting alternatives and waiting for advice on the options I put forth, like comparing my sculpts up against a skeleton or practicing drawing the muscles onto a skeleton from different angles. From a technical perspective I was not too fond of trying to mess with every single muscle to get it perfectly in place. It sounds like a great learning opportunity, but I doubt ill get through it without a headache. It was also the first time I've ever heard of something like that, whereas drawing I constantly hear about which is why I've done it on this thread before.
I've seen better anatomical crits on little 3 day topics where people attempt to make their first shirtless character than most comments on this 5-6 page thread i've dedicated to myself (except the human head part, got some real good crits there).
I was here:
Im now here
Thats about a week of practice for about an hour every other day or so.
I constantly seek advice from people who know what they're doing. If no one speaks up while im doing this then you can't blame me for going in the wrong direction.
I was saying as long as I know where the insertion and origin is of each muscle, why would I need to put them onto a skeleton. Molding each one would take alot of time and base mesh preparation, and alot of muscles aren't visible on a human in the same way they are visible on a skeleton. Ill agree it is very useful to know what is under the skin to the best of your ability, but I doubt that is the only way. Im all ears for any other suggestions.
you would do it, because then you would learn how the muscle forms build up to the end result of a human being. instead of the blobby mess you're making now.
and like i said. you don't even have the basic human silouhette looking right at the moment. delete everything above division 3, and just work on shape, not on detail. until you get these fundementals down, you will never have the advanced stuff right.
this is coming from someone who made the same mistakes. believe me, i know it's hard to shrug off your ego and admit you're doing it wrong, but you have to, or you won't progress.
oh, and the reason people aren't speaking up: because you're not listening. or rather... you're selectively listening.
llooks like his traps are over developed, his traps seem to run into his medial delts, make the conection to the clavicle more obvious. Also his upper arm looks too long, the forarms is bent unaturaly away from the body and the way the arm muscles are connected makes it look unbelivable.
also you should find out where almighty_gir lives and beat him up for being mean on the internet. but dont mess with me becasue I can bench 200 pounds and know karate. lol, srsly man how old are you?
keep up the hard work, Although I personaly think you should put in more than a few hours a week. this industrys highly competitive.
Thanks for the crits, now im going to heavily modify my basemesh instead of editing it. Hopefully I can get a better stance and way better proportions once its fixed.
"also you should find out where almighty_gir lives and beat him up for being mean on the internet. but dont mess with me becasue I can bench 200 pounds and know karate. lol, srsly man how old are you?"
What? What does this have to do anything? I never said he was being mean, way to make it sound like im 5. I said he was pissing me off because apparently I post one doodle and now all my sculpts are doodles and im spending very little time on them. I didn't ignore his criticism either. He has great criticism actually, but he wraps it in little remarks.
As to the sculpting on too high subdivision (this is to everyone), I misinterpreted it thinking you guys though I was going to the max level and then sculpting the muscle. I didn't think you were telling me to actually sculpt at a low poly to get mass down - which explains my bickering back earlier on in the thread.
question:
when you show us each of your updates. are you working with the same model all the time? or are you resculpting from a blank basemesh each time?
im going to have to agree with gir on this one, for this step of the process it would be good practice to start from scratch everytime (basemesh) so you dont get lost with shapes that are already on a previous model
i've done a little paintover, and keep in mind this is probably not perfect by any means but it gives you some things to consider:
overall the model is a bit too tall but i think when you fix some of the anatomical errors, this should straighten itself out. the typical male figure is about 8 heads tall, your at about 8.5
1. some forms on your head could use some work, such as the top of the cranium which is somewhat wide and flat. also it may be a tad small for the size of the body overall
2. the neck is looking a bit weird to me, i would widen the taper of the sternocleidomastoid muscle towards the clavicals and invert the direction (instead of "pinching" inward as it moves down, it should bend outward)
3. the pectorals are a bit too skinny, i would fan them out a bit and raise them a tad possibly
4. the shoulders are too straight across, and have a strange "nob" at the top. carve that down and move the shoulders to a lower position
5. the biceps look too long, shorten them up a bit and tuck them under the deltoid (shoulder) some more in the front
6. just like the bicep, the forearm looks too long, and lacks any organic curve. that, in my opinion, is one of the most important things to remember when working with anatomy; the body has hardly any straight lines in it, most of the forms curve and twist
7. widen the ribcage, right now the torso looks to be too thin up top and remembering that the ribcage pretty much defines the shape of the chest should help you out
8. the pelvis seems to be one of your biggest problem areas, and it looks to me like it is too far up on the belly of your character. try moving it down (along with the obliques) and tucking in between the thighs more. keep your chest size more equal from the ribcage down to the start of the thighs, your character looks to be malnourished the way it sits now
again, i want to say im not an expert at anatomy and my paintovers suck, but hopefully these handful of points will help you out with future sculpts. like a few have said before, i think you are focusing a bit too much on defining the muscle forms before getting the overall mass distribution of the body down. im sure you'll find if you focus on the broader picture first, the rest will come more easily. good luck :thumbup:
the point of asking you to do a block out was to see how well you grasp the outlying shape (silouhette) of a human being.
at this point you shouldn't be trying to define things like muscle overlays, or skin creases in any area. all you should be doing is make his outline look human.
with that in mind, broaden the chest and hips slightly, work on the hands, look at the trapezoid.
I still stand by my advice about learning the skeleton, you're just making it more difficult for yourself because you are missing a part of the equation.
Psyk0: thats a great reference, i might just have to secretly place that in my reference folder thanks
frell: i still stand by what pretty much everyone has said, and considering doing it "your way" hasn't made you a master sculptor overnight, then i suggest you at least humor all of these kind community members and try some of their suggestions. it cant hurt, and who knows, it might help you grasp a key element that you are missing
I have to do alot of changes to my basemesh because im having alot of issues.
When you create characters, do you sculpt out the entire body on one mesh or do you work on the body, hands, and head separately? I've seen all 3 but im not sure what is the most common. Im guessing it depends if the character is clothed or not etc.
You could split into a bunch of subtools as long as there's no visible seams or glitches. For clothed characters i'd say it's definately better to split. What kind of issues you havin'?
I messed with the mouth area's topology and now I can't create the lips correctly and that caught and ruined me during my new anatomy sculpt and i've yet to become motivated to try again. Ill have to fix the mouth and restore it to how it was before, and i also have to play with the hands again, they tend to look bad up close but pretty decent in the full view, but very unnatural posing and fingerlength.
I have a new basemesh, the picture above is the old one. The new one has a more relaxed and natural stance, something I think the one above lacks, but ill have to mess with them both.
Replies
I still have some overall smoothing and small defining to do but here it is:
When all is good im going to move onto hands
I know you're not gonna like this, but I think you are wrong here. Anatomy is ROOTED in the skeleton.
The amount you will learn and grow from knowing the skeleton and then adjusting it and using that to inform your muscle and flesh anatomy will be by leaps and bounds over just doing "outside- in" sculpts over and over.
Perhaps a base mesh that looks like an anorexic person would be helpful to build up from, and another alternative.
Do you do any sketching as well? Learning how to represent the body in both 2D and 3D at the same time will make you improve far faster than doing just one.
With books theres so many that you can get and too many options, are there any main ones I should get? Id prefer E-books so I dont have to wait (pretty sure amazon has this).
The books are relatively cheap so I guess I could get about 3 or so.
Any crits on the model guys? :O
myfavouritemagazines.co.uk/ImagineFX-Anatomy/
Well while I wait im going to collect pictures of faces and overlap them in photoshop and see what exactly makes people look different.
-Colar bones should have V shape (the meeting point at the sternum is lower than the shoulders)
-Deltoid shape, needs to be more balanced, front head is too long currently
-The pectoralis major insertion could use more definition (it wraps under the front of the deltoid and should be a visible landmark)
-Where's the ribcage? another landmark that is useful for attaching the rest of the abdominal muscles and "breaks" a lot of the form in that area.
I'll stop here for now, hope that helps.
Thanks psyk0
While I was waiting I doodled this onto my basemesh, which is sadly probably the best 'full' character ive made in zbrush.
Ive never seen games where they have penises lol
Ill also try putting my model up against a skeleton.
Will do though, I have no problem sculpting the entire body at least once a day so doing it more can only be beneficial.
I must be missing something. Im sculpting all of these bodies with references all over my second monitor yet these past few have been getting the same results. Does anyone notice a pattern here? I dont but I hope someone else does.
Oh the doodle.. was not meant to be serious at all and I know I am definitely incapable of anything like that right now. I literally was waiting for replies and had just finished sculpting so I did that and kept adding on.
Thanks!
keep it up though, im seeing improvement. that "doodle" isn't half bad, so don't let happy cow put you down too much. there is no harm in doodling or sketching or speed sculpting, especially if you think of it in terms of other mediums. you don't see beginning 2d artists sitting down and completing huge finished pieces when they are learning, they start with quick sketches and doodles because working quick and loose is how you are better able to find mistakes and correct them. you dont want to work on a full character only to find out right before retopologizing that you have tons of problems to fix with the underlying form; thats a pain. my "duderz" started out as a quick sketch to get down a form and a personality, and i think it's grown into much more thanks to the help provided by the community. if i would have gone the whole nine yards with him right up front, i would have only accentuated the flaws and had to backtrack in order to fix all of my problems.
thats a little harsh, i don't see you posting up much of your character work for all to tear apart. it takes cojones to post up work that you feel is great, just to get put down by some random person on the forum.
speed modeling can drastically help your skills as seen by many artists here on polycount, including myself. now while i don't condone quickly modeling out something for your portfolio, something quick and loose for a speedie or something of similar nature is PERFECTLY fine. no one becomes an artist over night, and its ridiculous to assume that someone willing to learn is going to spend hours up hours on one silly little model that will probably get thrown into a random folder in the end.
to my understanding, this is a thread to help frell better understand the human form and muscle structure, so my suggestion would be to step back in subdivision levels for your last character, look at the relation of different parts of the body and try and nail a solid form down first. im sure you'll find that it becomes a lot easier to visualize without all the confusing detail that muscles add. heres something that should help a bit when it comes to relating the size of specific objects in relation to others:
sorry if i hurt your feelings for anything that i said happy cow, but i prefer the route of positive criticism over blunt criticism. i see too much "your terrible, use reference" critiques and i can bet that almost everyone was in the same position at some point or another, and they wouldn't be where they are now without some form of positive reinforcement. keep it up, continue using reference, and stick to simple forms at first, you're getting it :thumbup:
And frell, it's slowly getting there, just keep doing studies and do what everyone is telling you to do and you should be fine
i never said he should do it "as quick as possible" but spending hours upon hours on something like this (learning) is absurd. and i didnt mean underlying SKELETON, i meant the form of the human figure, minus over-the-top muscles popping out from everywhere. more specifically the correct proportions of the human form, and how each part relates to lengths found elsewhere on the body
now back to the thread at hand
if you want to learn anatomy, LEARN ANATOMY. stop posting half baked "doodles" of irrelivent things. stop sculpting a full body at very high subdivisions and then moving on to the next thing before taking crits into account.
and the biggest one of all... stop disagreeing with criticism.
being advised to sculpt over a skeleton was by far the *best* advice in this thread. and you quite blatently just threw it away.
if you want people to take you seriously in future, and to seriously help you, then seriously take on board their advice.
now stop fucking about, and get the basics down. learn to crawl, then learn to walk. give us some 2 division sculpts showing you at least know what a human silouhette looks like, and then move on to muscle form.
Right now Im planning to edit my base-mesh to have better base proportions and also mark specific landmarks on the human skeleton to help me in muscle placement.
This comment is the only comment that completely pissed me off. I've only posted one doodle. Im not sculpting at very high subdivisions, I actually set up mass in the first subdivision and end up finishing defining around the 3rd. In the 5th and 6th I try to better define the creases between muscles. Moving onto the next thing before taking crits into account? Really? Your ignorance is starting to hurt my hands. Ill be honest and say I still do suck, but in 3 pages I have noticed a significant improvement and that is enough to prove to me that if I keep at it I can know anatomy like the back of my hand and sculpt it like making a hot pocket by summer. I would love more crits, but I usually wait 24-48 hours between sculpts and Im lucky if I even get one post, so I have to resort to studying alone which obviously is not working for me at this stage.
Love what you did with the facts on the whole skeleton advice scene. I did not blatantly throw it away, while you were on your high horse you apparently stepped over me while I was posting alternatives and waiting for advice on the options I put forth, like comparing my sculpts up against a skeleton or practicing drawing the muscles onto a skeleton from different angles. From a technical perspective I was not too fond of trying to mess with every single muscle to get it perfectly in place. It sounds like a great learning opportunity, but I doubt ill get through it without a headache. It was also the first time I've ever heard of something like that, whereas drawing I constantly hear about which is why I've done it on this thread before.
I've seen better anatomical crits on little 3 day topics where people attempt to make their first shirtless character than most comments on this 5-6 page thread i've dedicated to myself (except the human head part, got some real good crits there).
I was here:
Im now here
Thats about a week of practice for about an hour every other day or so.
I constantly seek advice from people who know what they're doing. If no one speaks up while im doing this then you can't blame me for going in the wrong direction.
"Also, also: Frell, bind the interactive light from the plugins menu to an easily accessible shortcut for massive victories."
What do you mean?
I was saying as long as I know where the insertion and origin is of each muscle, why would I need to put them onto a skeleton. Molding each one would take alot of time and base mesh preparation, and alot of muscles aren't visible on a human in the same way they are visible on a skeleton. Ill agree it is very useful to know what is under the skin to the best of your ability, but I doubt that is the only way. Im all ears for any other suggestions.
Thanks
and like i said. you don't even have the basic human silouhette looking right at the moment. delete everything above division 3, and just work on shape, not on detail. until you get these fundementals down, you will never have the advanced stuff right.
this is coming from someone who made the same mistakes. believe me, i know it's hard to shrug off your ego and admit you're doing it wrong, but you have to, or you won't progress.
oh, and the reason people aren't speaking up: because you're not listening. or rather... you're selectively listening.
will do low poly sculpts after basemesh fix
llooks like his traps are over developed, his traps seem to run into his medial delts, make the conection to the clavicle more obvious. Also his upper arm looks too long, the forarms is bent unaturaly away from the body and the way the arm muscles are connected makes it look unbelivable.
also you should find out where almighty_gir lives and beat him up for being mean on the internet. but dont mess with me becasue I can bench 200 pounds and know karate. lol, srsly man how old are you?
keep up the hard work, Although I personaly think you should put in more than a few hours a week. this industrys highly competitive.
"also you should find out where almighty_gir lives and beat him up for being mean on the internet. but dont mess with me becasue I can bench 200 pounds and know karate. lol, srsly man how old are you?"
What? What does this have to do anything? I never said he was being mean, way to make it sound like im 5. I said he was pissing me off because apparently I post one doodle and now all my sculpts are doodles and im spending very little time on them. I didn't ignore his criticism either. He has great criticism actually, but he wraps it in little remarks.
As to the sculpting on too high subdivision (this is to everyone), I misinterpreted it thinking you guys though I was going to the max level and then sculpting the muscle. I didn't think you were telling me to actually sculpt at a low poly to get mass down - which explains my bickering back earlier on in the thread.
Good idea, don't fall into the habit of subdividing unnecessary!
when you show us each of your updates. are you working with the same model all the time? or are you resculpting from a blank basemesh each time?
p.s. i already know the answer to this question.
i've done a little paintover, and keep in mind this is probably not perfect by any means but it gives you some things to consider:
overall the model is a bit too tall but i think when you fix some of the anatomical errors, this should straighten itself out. the typical male figure is about 8 heads tall, your at about 8.5
1. some forms on your head could use some work, such as the top of the cranium which is somewhat wide and flat. also it may be a tad small for the size of the body overall
2. the neck is looking a bit weird to me, i would widen the taper of the sternocleidomastoid muscle towards the clavicals and invert the direction (instead of "pinching" inward as it moves down, it should bend outward)
3. the pectorals are a bit too skinny, i would fan them out a bit and raise them a tad possibly
4. the shoulders are too straight across, and have a strange "nob" at the top. carve that down and move the shoulders to a lower position
5. the biceps look too long, shorten them up a bit and tuck them under the deltoid (shoulder) some more in the front
6. just like the bicep, the forearm looks too long, and lacks any organic curve. that, in my opinion, is one of the most important things to remember when working with anatomy; the body has hardly any straight lines in it, most of the forms curve and twist
7. widen the ribcage, right now the torso looks to be too thin up top and remembering that the ribcage pretty much defines the shape of the chest should help you out
8. the pelvis seems to be one of your biggest problem areas, and it looks to me like it is too far up on the belly of your character. try moving it down (along with the obliques) and tucking in between the thighs more. keep your chest size more equal from the ribcage down to the start of the thighs, your character looks to be malnourished the way it sits now
again, i want to say im not an expert at anatomy and my paintovers suck, but hopefully these handful of points will help you out with future sculpts. like a few have said before, i think you are focusing a bit too much on defining the muscle forms before getting the overall mass distribution of the body down. im sure you'll find if you focus on the broader picture first, the rest will come more easily. good luck :thumbup:
My base mesh is the same as the one on page 4 except reposed and the hip was moved up.
Yes I start from scratch almost every time
Looks better but im getting frustrated with the low poly, I feel spots where I cant get it defined.
Anyone have any tips for shoulders? Theyre the most frustrating part for me.
at this point you shouldn't be trying to define things like muscle overlays, or skin creases in any area. all you should be doing is make his outline look human.
with that in mind, broaden the chest and hips slightly, work on the hands, look at the trapezoid.
all you need to do is think simple. baby steps.
http://i472.photobucket.com/albums/rr90/Psyk0/page56.gif
I still stand by my advice about learning the skeleton, you're just making it more difficult for yourself because you are missing a part of the equation.
frell: i still stand by what pretty much everyone has said, and considering doing it "your way" hasn't made you a master sculptor overnight, then i suggest you at least humor all of these kind community members and try some of their suggestions. it cant hurt, and who knows, it might help you grasp a key element that you are missing
Here was my latest sculpt, this wasn't meant to be too detailed as it was a simple manikin for a character, but I thought it came out pretty decent:
When you create characters, do you sculpt out the entire body on one mesh or do you work on the body, hands, and head separately? I've seen all 3 but im not sure what is the most common. Im guessing it depends if the character is clothed or not etc.
I have a new basemesh, the picture above is the old one. The new one has a more relaxed and natural stance, something I think the one above lacks, but ill have to mess with them both.
Also,Youre missing the linea alba!
and even then, at the stage youre at, you should have the linea alba dude
http://wiki.polycount.com/BaseMesh