skullz till i die...
hey guys!
as per the recomendation of fellow polycounter SupRore, i decided to try out the ZBrush 3 tuto, "Sculpting a skull with image planes". i only just got a chance to give this tuto a go [school's a nightmare], and what i'm posting here is only my first try. i'm not necesarily doing this for crits [though i would like some] as i feel, as many of u guys do, that i should be more self-critical. This thread is actually to see how much progress/improvement i have. If u wish to post a comment [absolutely any comment] feel free to. And if u see a glaring mistake that i don't rectify even after a few attempts, please do point it out to me.
so. here is the first of my many skulls to come.
personally think that its not too bad for my first attempt, that too without watching the video. _but_ there is alot of room for improvement [no duh]. done within an hour btw. i'd spend more time, but i'm off to do some homework atm. got a truckload of that.
cheers
as per the recomendation of fellow polycounter SupRore, i decided to try out the ZBrush 3 tuto, "Sculpting a skull with image planes". i only just got a chance to give this tuto a go [school's a nightmare], and what i'm posting here is only my first try. i'm not necesarily doing this for crits [though i would like some] as i feel, as many of u guys do, that i should be more self-critical. This thread is actually to see how much progress/improvement i have. If u wish to post a comment [absolutely any comment] feel free to. And if u see a glaring mistake that i don't rectify even after a few attempts, please do point it out to me.
so. here is the first of my many skulls to come.
personally think that its not too bad for my first attempt, that too without watching the video. _but_ there is alot of room for improvement [no duh]. done within an hour btw. i'd spend more time, but i'm off to do some homework atm. got a truckload of that.
cheers
Replies
And when you're done doing skulls, do some tits. These forums can always use more tits.
oh, mouth couls use some more detail
@dabu: yeah, i shoulda done teeth and stuff, but i wanted to try a one hour excercise.
@East: haha! i don't fall off horses. horses fall off me.
@Rhinokey: yeah i think the gnarled polies is cuz of the orientation of the sphere. this time around, i rotated the sphere so that all faces meet at the top and bottom. and added more polies detail to the mouth this time.
so, here's skull number two:
u guys said that the proportions were looking proper, so i'm proud of that, and this time around, tried getting them to look 'great'. added details to the mouth region, went easier on the rake, and 'took my time'. or so it felt like, ultimately, this was done in 1hr 20minutes lol. personally, this skull looks better to me. the earlier one had pits that were too deep, and looked messy. compared to this one, i think the previous one looked alien almost? lol.
well, once again, thanks for dropping by!
cheers
http://i8.tinypic.com/43o3vo0.jpg
why don't you think of a target age, and gender for your skull, model it, and show us both the model, and what age/gender you were going for. they can be a lot more specific that way =]
perception is a strange beast; we don't see, and we don't see, no matter how hard we look at something, and then it pops. boom. level up. that sounds corny, but you'll see it--ever look back at pieces of yours that you used to think were awesome, but now you can see all the glaring flaws of? that's because of how far you've come in artistic perception since.
all the good artists are a combination of a great pair of eyes tied to some very well trained muscle memory.
as weird as it might sound, the seeing is the really important thing to art.
so that's what your project is now. yes you're improving on your sculpting, but on a more conceptual basis, what you're trying to do is push through to a more advanced perception. the way an artist sees a face, sees a skull or really any other object in the world is different from that of a non-artist.
it's called the process of sensitization. you've heard about how we're all desensitized to violence through our movies and games, right? there's some truth to that. but the flip side is sensitization--learning to see or notice things you didn't before. good art programs will help you sensitize to different elements.
taking a strong graphic design course will help sensitize you to use of space, negative space, color, and especially typeface usage (kerning, leading, etc.); a good industrial design course will help sensitize you to aspects of manufacturing, material choices, part lines, tolerances, ergonomics, styling, and so forth. and, of course, a quality studio art course will sensitize you to the strengths and weaknesses of different media, to color choice and usage, composition, and LIGHT, that which dictates virtually all of the artist's domain.
for this project, reference and more reference will help. or a skeleton, see if you can find a toy or anatomy reference mannequin so you can have something in your hands to reference.
working from reference, either drawing or sculpting, you should actually spend more of your time looking at the reference, not at your piece. stare at the reference object or model, and then check back at your piece... as if your eyes were lasers, chiseling out a carbon copy by touching each point on the original and then replicating it when you look down. okay that sounds a little odd, but should help give you some idea of the state of mind, the focus you'll need to capture a likeness. remember, art is about seeing, far less about actually drawing than you think.
so that's what you need to be working hard on now, is learning to see. you need to learn to see the skull, get to know it, draw it so often that you can do it fairly well without reference, and best of all know why your current model is lacking, how you have a tendency to superficial sculpting far too soon.
glad to see you put an emphasis on self-criticism; this will help you a lot. as to the sculpting, the pcounters are right again. you look like you're doing well until the second subdivide, and you're lost making very small sculpts on the surface of the form, whereas your first picture was much more encouraging.
it might well be high time for you to do some old fashioned low polygon modeling. model the skull in 500 polygons or so--try and approximate all the features as best you can... then you can move up to a 1000 poly skull. i think you're sort of getting overwhelmed by working with too many polygons at once.
http://sebleg.free.fr/2005/pics/woskull2.jpg
hope it helps
not to worry! i haven't stopped!
but atm, i don't even have time to read ur suggestions/tips! i'll do that this weekend! thanks by the way!
i rnt be quitting yet