Is it harder to sculpt women than sculpting men?
To anyone that sculpts characters, do you have a slightly harder time sclupting women(beautiful sexy women) than men? or perhaps the reverse? If so, why is that?
Just curious if there's a reason or if it's common that some people have a harder time with women, or if you guys feel like it's the same difficulty level.
Just curious if there's a reason or if it's common that some people have a harder time with women, or if you guys feel like it's the same difficulty level.
Replies
Women, well I mean it's usually just a very soft face with little in the way of imperfections. Smooth with subtle shapes. Same with bodies, a girl's arm compared to a guy's - which is going to have more definition? Definition and detail gives me purpose and knowledge to work with. Painting a...pleasantly shapely tube without much definition I generally find to be much less interesting, which has led to a lack of practice, and I'd probably have to spend longer on it if I did it. I also feel like an aesthetically pleasing guy is generally more accurate to life than what is typically accepted as an aesthetically pleasing girl (I'm mostly talking face here, believe it or not). Faces especially for female characters tend to be so specific with how smooth they are, how small and perky their noses are, how big/shapely their eyes are, the lips that are always open just a bit, etc. That's the norm, anyway.
Though, I have noticed a bit of androgyny making its way into my faces from time to time, which is something I'm actually happy about. I'm beginning to appreciate the creative subtleties that can be implemented in women. Freedom to do things with makeup, eyelashes, hairstyles, jewelry, etc. I will have to try to work on some women in the near future, I think.
You can do almost anything to male sculpts and they still can turn out manly, while when you give the wrong wrinkle in a womens face too much weight it will turn her into a guy.
Beautiful women are all about subtlety, the wrong balance in minor parts can turn the whole thing around.
In the end it's all about practice, if you did nothing but women for years, they will be easier for you, sadly the majority of game characters i do are male, therefore i think i lack experience in that field.
If you consider every single aspect of a human being from muscles to bones to skin and fat, then it does not matter what gender you sculpt.
they are 100% equal in difficulty.
the only difference lies in the eyes of the observer and their capability to objectively judge the quality of the work and how much they are willing to compromise in each gender in regards to anatomy/flesh/bones etc.
as soon as you go down the realism route then any mistakes or imperfections in anatomy tend to stand out like a sore thumb.
"What was the most challenging asset for ME3?
Rodrigue: I think it was the female characters in general. It's so hard to get a female character that pleases everyone. Whatever the project, the female characters are always the ones that need the most iterations because we all have a different idea of what a beautiful woman looks like.
The Reapers were also a challenge because on the tech side these guys are so big it was tough to get them running in the engine while keeping them looking awesome."
taken from http://pixologic.com/interview/mass-effect3/7/
Female game characters you just export the naked mesh when you're done. :poly122:
I don't view that as an issue, it's just the process most people learn in. I mean really, that's pretty much all they're going to find when people say "Go study anatomy". You pick up any anatomy book, what've you got? Muscles. Fit, idealistic bodies. Even if they wanted "guided" practice, is it really that easy for folks to go out and find a guide who's going to teach them how to paint subtle attractive lady features? Or are they going to get stuck posting shit online where they're lucky to get "Go study anatomy" as a crit?
Besides, I kind of feel like subtlety is on the other end of the extreme. It's not what anyone should be trying to do at first. First you have to do things "right", do something basic and normal. Muscle groups, bones, proportions, etc. Once you've got normal, then you mess it up and make it weirder/more extreme, or learn to fine tune it with attractive subtleties.
i think that says it all though. no difference in 'difficulty' to do the work but female characters get judged on a different and much subtler scale (i.e. attractiveness).
unless you work for square, then you are f*cked both ways.
I won't deny that as a potentially helpful possibility, but I would still consider scuplting or painting the "beautiful sexy women" art OP was referring to to be a ways down the road from pumping out silhouettes and studies of nude 20-60 year olds. Better than grinding on biceps, for sure, but my point was that the subtlety and "beauty" usually interpreted from female forms isn't exactly "art stuff 101", so it makes sense that there aren't as many people who hit that point and are able to churn it out.
Men, on the other hand, men. Any goes for men. As long as it's not anatomically disaster. Men have many faces on the magazine. Women ? All women look the same. (to a certain degree) on a magazine cover.
that makes no sense.
if you ask a straight girl then it would be the opposite of that.
men, woman, what ever you sculpt, it is all the same level of difficulty IF you want to achieve the same level of quality.
it seems really absurd to say men cannot be beautifully sculpted. there are same amount of subtleties to be handled when sculpting a male form.
few examples:
http://cghub.com/images/view/248562/favorite:14152/
http://www.telekiraul.com/
it all depends on at what point you are willing to be satisfied by a specific piece of art. every single human sculpt out there has TONS of flaws all around it. it all depends how many flaws YOU can see. If you are good at female sculpting you will see more flaws in females and vise versa.
if you think one is easier than the other then the problem lies in your own observation.
Maybe it's because you are most familiar with the subtleties of your own body. Maybe it's because artists usually start out portraying their own gender, because they relate to it better. Either way, one is not harder than the other, it's just what you are most familiar with and have practiced the most.
I'm not saying men can't be beautifully sculpted. I'm saying sculpting men isn't so focused on oh-so-handsome quality. Whereas most sculpted women are oh-so-Victoria's Secret Models.
whether an artists focuses on a male sculpt to be beautiful or not is completely irrelevant to the question of topic here. artists not focusing on any particular subject does not equal to that subject being easier than other subjects.
most 3d artists are creating female models, so the question of one being more difficult than other is answered usually with a bias like you just did.
forget about digital media, think of traditional sculptures. there are tons of properly done male figures and comparatively less anatomically correct female sculptures. that does not mean male sculptured were easier to make back in renaissance period, it just means nude female models well less available back then.
objectively thinking, they are equally difficult.
i'd say this. with men you can get away with just making muscles everywhere (you can't, but people do anyway) with women you have to be more aware of where the structure is since they tend to be ultra sexy and everything everything has to be very apparent. breast on ribcage, hips flare out, etc.
obviously they're very close anatomically thats just the way people tend to look at them.
I sculpt characters with a focus on likeness. From my experiences, sculpting women is MUCH more difficult when it comes to likeness. The main issue that plagues me is that female features are often subtle, small, soft and not well defined. This really bumps up the difficulty (for me anyways) for likeness sculpts since accuracy and details are so important yet observing, understanding and translating those details and subtleties from reference photos to my sculpts can be very challenging. It doesn't help (especially with famous women) that you have to deal with makeup, lighting, filters and plastic surgery in your reference photos, specifically aimed at making her features even softer and more subtle!! This ends up making the task of sculpting the likeness of a female even more daunting.
Males on the other hand often have strong, sharp and well defined features making it far easier to observe and work with the lighting used in photos of males often makes their features even stronger and more prominent. As anyone who has ever attempted a likeness can tell you, when something is off, even by millimeters it can throw the accuracy out the window, I cant tell you how many times I have been stuck on a likeness only to move some little part (especially eyes) a tiny bit and its like Im suddenly looking at a brand new model!
Now if I am just sculpting random heads/faces with out aiming for likeness, I would agree that both present an equal challenge, perhaps women being slightly easier in this case due to their softer and more gentle subtle features..
no one took my bait, damn lol
To answer the question though, IMO women are definitely harder to sculpt
What i'm trying to say is.. someone has to be used/trained to see the differences. Like for every eight year old people over 25 are.. old..
For example: Ever heard of prosopagnosia ?? (..and i'm presuming anything here ) My uncle had a milder form. Which already sometimes leads to arkward moments when for example he ranted about a certain employee at the supermarket which is a friend of mine and was sitting at the table..
^ This was a joke, by the way. Artists take things way too seriously here. Don't worry, I have friends who are white
So, slurs based on/assuming/making fun of someone's sentimental or sex life are cool again now ?
Female clothing also tends to be more fitting and highlighting curvature, even if there isn't much curvature (like Kay Vess) so the anatomical variations if any do stand out and there is more to highlight and criticise.
I'm sure there is substantial variation that is more observable if they had no makeup and didn't use clothing that helped in body contouring which men aren't expected to get into.
And no its not always men making women consider these choices, women compete with other women even if the underlying purpose is to feel confident and they insist has nothing to do with gaining attention from men.
I've always been annoyed by how limited fashion choices are for men in western fashion. Every clothing store you walk into the men's section is a tiny corner compared to womens which is several floors.
So much resource wasted in the pursuit to look attractive.
I'm surprised there isn't a major movement against 3D porn and pornography in general, as well as clothing and fashion brands that very clearly objectify women.
I'm thinking its because the focus tends to demonise men as being the initial cause of why the situation is the way it is, then again I'm not seeing any real push from feminists running platforms like only fans into the ground, many of them see it as empowerment.
So its no wonder if it starts influencing younger women to conform to that trend and limits the variation the audience is willing to accept in video game media.
Not that opposing it is going to make any difference, in the end its what sells that matters so that will decide what is popular.
There are alternatives to online sex work, and desperation doesn't mean having to consider sex work.
With realism or stylized work, there's photoreference and visual targets so as long as that's being matched I think both would work out the same provided the visual target is hit.
I think that's what happened with the whole star wars outlaws situation with Kay Vess, they likely had some visual target but in the end it just didn't have universal appeal.
Whether it needed universal appeal is another matter since that's going more to the business side of things.
There was a lot of emphasis on trying to make the character tougher by breaking her nose, squaring her jaw, making her less conventinionally feminine rather attempting to define what being feminine should be, or what being Kay Vess should be.
I think this is what complicates sculpting female characters when the approach looks beyond the visual target and the design team is trying to capture personality of the individual through the characters appearance.
This becomes more complicated when it comes to female characters and is an extension of how it is in real life.
Like the vast difference in men and womens fashion and what is expected of men and women when it comes to being fashionable.
Go to any clothing store and the womens section is massive compared to mens, and I don't see women boycotting this, the fashion industry is heavily supported by women and I don't think its simply to please men.
As such there's a lot more emphasis on a female character sculpt being appealing over a male character sculpt provided both are strong in the fundamentals.
Going back to Kay Vess, still find Ubisoft's marketing approach interesting since they very willingly gave Humberly Gonzalez that platform though she doesn't resemble Kay Vess at all.
Like many people don't find Kay Vess appealing but I doubt there are many that disagree with the appeal of Humberly Gonzalez, so why try to fix what isn't broken by literally breaking the poor girls nose.
Like its not clear if they were promoting Humberly because of her being the voice actor or that she is Kay Vess even if she doesn't look like Kay or has her personality at all.
Ideally I assumed that this promotion would have been like the situation with promoting Japanse Voice actors that voice anime characters, neither is vaulted nor disregarded for the other and both hold their place, so maybe Kay is just not as strong a character even if she was designed as such, or there's just too much going against her with this being the star wars universe?
Or its just a matter of audience preferences when it comes to western audiences.
I think it was a combination of design and ability on the part of the team, and inadequate testing since a lot of her appeal comes to overall composition.
But I have to appreciate the absolute hilarity around the situation when it comes to commentary.