Face Refinement

[KenH]

I'm trying to learn the form of a human face by modeling it. Even though I see it in the mirror most days, it amazes me how I'm still discovering bumps and hollows that I never knew were there.
So, if you can tell me how this guy looks and offer improvements such as "Shorten the neck!" it would be great. Hopefully I'll get around to texturing him so that I can learn that also.
PS I know his honker is big, but that's in his genes! ;)

http://www2.zbrushcentral.com/zbc_uploads/user_image-1042076011oon.jpg

[zerobugetgamemaker]

good work ken. I have three suggestions for you
- the top of the head is too flat
-the jaws are too high and too far out from the head
-no ears!!! (theyre hard, there's a section about them in the quicklinks)

David

[Grub]

I agree with Zero's comments.
Looks pretty decent to me, time to add some eyes and ears methinks. He could do with some broader shoulders though. Should look great textured and lit. Keep it up! :) :tu: :tu: :tu:

[Monkeyfarm]

The eye thing is a really common area. Remember that the eyes are almost at the mid-point of the face. A good reference book that is ice and light on "theory" and has lots of really good reference stuff is the book Drawing The Head and Figure (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0399507914/qid=1042084810/sr=8-2/ref=sr_8_2/104-6064763-4931111?v=glance&s=books&n=507846) by Jack Hamm (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/search-handle-url/index=books&field-author=Hamm%2C%20Jack/104-6064763-4931111).

I don't remember where I read it, but it seems that a reason why so many people that are not "aware" of face proportions (a good example is little kids) and draw the eyes so high on the head has to do with the short connection between the optic nerve and the brain. Because the brain interprets the signals from the eyes as so "close", it seems that the eye's are higher on your head, at least from the inside out. Honest, I know I read it somewhere! :)

Perhaps it was in Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0874775132/qid=1042085047/sr=1-5/ref=sr_1_5/104-6064763-4931111?v=glance&s=books).

Wow, it's a good thing this is not SlashDot where my post won't get moderated as off-topic! :)

[Jaycephus]

A rule of thumb on the shoulders is that there ought to be enough room for three heads (and necks) coming off the shoulders. A picture might help you see what I am talking about, but the short of it is that you need to add just a bit of width to the shoulders. I agree with the other critiques as well, and I want to add that you've got a pretty good model going. Keep working it.

[s o u t h e r n]

As with a more traditionsl Polygon modeler I find it helpful to put an image of a head in side view and front view into the canvas.

G

[dishinki]

Well monkeyfarm..i'm not sure about that, but i guess its possible.

If someone is having problems with facial proportions, take the low road and render it upside down or at a downward angle.
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/brain/illusions/form.html

neat example of this at that URL.

[Frenchy Pilou]

Don't copy the reality, better is interpretate :)
Pilou

[Jaycephus]

Hi Dishinki,

That Abe Lincoln face illusion illustrates an important artist's technique of mirroring or inverting a drawing or painting to check form, proportion, etc. I wonder if it is due to the artist becoming so accustomed to what he is drawing that he begins to ignore problems that have crept in. By inverting or mirroring the drawing, you break the illusion you have fallen into. I once did a portrait drawing in a sketching class and drew the subject's hand with five fingers not counting the thumb. I never saw it until I came to the exibition of the class's artwork. Perhaps seeing my drawing on an easel in an unfamiliar setting was enough to break the illusion for me, and I noticed right away that the hand had five fingers. If I had inverted the picture or mirrored it vertically when I was still drawing it, I might have caught the mistake sooner.

Of course, with faces, we have a built-in recognition factor that messes with our perceptions. Since we are geared toward recognizing faces, we tend to see a drawing or sculpture of a face as a real face. Our brain, with its built-in face-recoginition processing, interferes with the process of creating the face. By looking at the face upside-down, the recognition factor is turned off or bypassed. Now we can more easily view the face as an object that may have serious problems with its proportions or what-not.

On the site you linked to, the third example of an illusion of Form is faked! It shows a 3D face that rotates. The claim is that our brain tries to recognize a face, and since we 'know' that faces are convex, even when we are looking at the concave side, we tend to see it as a convex shape. This may be true to an extent, but their example is faked. It is an illusion of an illusion. You click a button to rotate the 3D face, but it is a Flash creation, and they just provide a series of 2D pictures of a 3D rendering. I believe that they doctored these pictures by pasting in a render of a convex face on the concave side. PBS faked this example.