Anatomy improvement thread. Critique wanted!
polycounter lvl 9
Hi, I've been learning 3D modelling as a hobbyist for a couple of years now and have been using Zbrush for about 12 months.
I've just recently started trying to make a push to really improve my anatomy sculpting and knowledge. I'm hoping to use this thread to catalogue my work and gather some feedback about what areas I can improve.
I've uploaded some initial images showing my latest head sculpt. There are some problems I know about already with this such as the hairline being too far back. Any comments people have are more than welcome though.
Additionally, I have included my start on female anatomy. This is a rough outline before I move onto the legs/head. I will hopefully update this significantly in the next few days.
I've just recently started trying to make a push to really improve my anatomy sculpting and knowledge. I'm hoping to use this thread to catalogue my work and gather some feedback about what areas I can improve.
I've uploaded some initial images showing my latest head sculpt. There are some problems I know about already with this such as the hairline being too far back. Any comments people have are more than welcome though.
Additionally, I have included my start on female anatomy. This is a rough outline before I move onto the legs/head. I will hopefully update this significantly in the next few days.
Replies
The noise on the face wasn't meant to be uniform, but I agree that it does look that way. I think that's valuable feedback! I also did some texturing but I think I was not bold enough if it seems like it's still a solid single colour.
I will probably update this post with some untextured, hairless versions of the head later tonight. If possible I would like some focused feedback on the forms I've got at the moment. I think I've reached the stage where I can no longer easily identify the faults, would be good to have some critical pointers to make sure I progress in the right way.
-The ears look really weird, even if the sillohette is correct based on your reference (which is extremely abnormal) Im sure the thickness is not correct, it looks paper thin in areas that are usually thicker and fleshy.
-The eyebrow hair is extremely short. You usually have less hairs and they are much longer and groomed towards the side of the head.
-The eyelids look very flat, in fact the whole thing looks off in terms of depth of the face. I would imagine you spent a lot of time matching things up from the front and not enough time working in 3quarters view nailing all the forms down.
-Are you using dam Standard Brush? You should be using it on those wrinkles. Not to say that you have to, but its really handy and your wrinkles are not nearly sharp enough or defined.
-You said you did texturing and added color variation, but it looks so flat color wise, when seeing this for the first time you would think the skin is one solid color. This sorta gives me the impression that you are not being bold enough as you already pointed out with your work. I think this could be a lack of confidence but I would urge you to exaggerate things a lot more and if you need to its easy to pull them back some. Its so simple to just work on a layer and dial down changes if you went too heavy handed, but you cant do that if the detail simply is not there.
-Your skin pores are uniform. Skin pores are different all over the face and it looks really fake and cg if you do this. Even the angle of the skin pores make a dramatic change in how real a character looks. Skin pores sorta flow around the face in a very distinct manner. You should get some ref. and really study this if you are going to even bother with skin pores at all.
-lips look small and pinched, eyes overly bright, and the white of the eyes is way too white. Also you dont have any veins in the eyes either.
-one last thing to think about is the color zones of the face when texturing. Study up on that, check this out: http://gurneyjourney.blogspot.com/2008/05/color-zones-of-face.html
There is a bunch more stuff I could nit pick but these are the major things. Just compare your sculpt to someone who is really awesome at this and you will see its just not at that level yet. Frank Tzeng can be a bench mark for you (he is for me) and best of all he has some of the best tutorials on realistic character busts available. Check out the intro here and you can buy the tutorials in the link if you want: [ame]
But here is some of franks work for example: This is a sculpt mind you
http://www.zbrushcentral.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=339203
wip here: http://www.zbrushcentral.com/showthread.php?102617-Frank-Tzeng-s-sketchbook/page17
I think I definitely fell into the trap of doing too much work on the head sculpt without getting the forms down. As soon as you mentioned the face being a bit too flat it was incredibly obvious to me, I think I'm still learning how to properly assess my work. I've stared at this model a lot so, to me, it looks pretty good.
The ears are from a weird reference. They can definitely be improved in terms of the thickness but the silhouette is due to an odd choice of reference image.
I've uploaded an untextured and hairless version of the sculpt. Taking your criticism into account the flaws are now so much more obvious.
I've purchased the tutorial by Frank Tzeng by the way. Not yet had time to watch it but I'm definitely looking forward to it.
That colour zones link is really cool. I think that some of the problem I had with my texturing was just having NO idea what to do and where to start. Think I will focus on the underlying sculpt for a while now though.
Just to confirm though. I am going to take the advice and focus more on loose sculpts to work on form.
I've done some work on my female anatomy sculpture. I'm trying to take all the previous advice on board and just focus on shape without starting detailing.
With that in mind, are there any areas here that are in dire need of attention? Some comments would be great to give me a bit of direction.