First attempts

[MealeaYing]

Aww.....
That did give it more somehow.
Poor guy...

[voodoodad]

Aww.....
That did give it more somehow.
Poor guy...

Yeah, talk about a tortured soul.

[voodoodad]

I finally decided that I had to make this a full-fledged bust, as opposed to just a free floating head.

[KC-Production]

Wow you are putting a lot of great works out man!
Nice work on your latest sculpt, really nice looking great!
Keep it going buddy and have fun sculpting!
Cheers,
- Kenny

[voodoodad]

Thank you Kenny. I wish my progress was going as quick as yours, but us old folks learn a lot slower lol.

Here's what I'm working on right now. Hoping to make a full fledged scene out of it if I can hold it together lol.

[KC-Production]

I really love this one, really great face study and for me this is my favourite for sure! Congrats mate
He is carrying a great gesture in his face and If I may the eye area needs a little more lovin'^^
Keep it going!
Cheers buddy,
- Kenny

[voodoodad]

Thanks, Kenny. Yeah the face was just bare bones shaping at the time I posted that. Here's what I have now.

[voodoodad]

Good lord! I didn't pay attention when I posted the last one last night. The colors are way off after uploading, but the colors on my local file are fine. I'll upload another one later and see if that looks better.

[SpiritDreamer]

Hi Gary

Hey, you are getting pretty good with that Fibermesh..Right texture, shine, and softness in that tree quarter view on this last bust that your working on..Great job on the face also..good emotion captured there..

I just tried out the new perspective features in ZBRUSH as you suggested I do earlier on....Works GREAT...WOW...What a difference...luv it.....Thanks for that suggestion Gary.....and Keep up the Great Work and Great Progress my friend..

Glenn

[voodoodad]

Hi Gary

Hey, you are getting pretty good with that Fibermesh..Right texture, shine, and softness in that tree quarter view on this last bust that your working on..Great job on the face also..good emotion captured there..

I just tried out the new perspective features in ZBRUSH as you suggested I do earlier on....Works GREAT...WOW...What a difference...luv it.....Thanks for that suggestion Gary.....and Keep up the Great Work and Great Progress my friend..

Glenn

Thank you, Glenn! That one was originally intended to be Ian Holm as Bilbo Baggins, but I don't feel I ever quite got the likeness. But I still liked the sculpt overall. Wish the colors hadn't gotten screwed up between my computer and ZBC, but oh well lol. Like I said I'll upload a different pic of him later and hopefully that won't happen again. Regarding the perspective, I really hate to say I told you so, but... well, you know.

Here's my current wip.

[voodoodad]

After 11 fairly steady hours of work, about 20 crashes, 100's of mistakes, 5032 curse words and a partridge in a pear tree, I'm 95% sure I'm 75% done with about 83.2% of this piece. Hope you guys like it.

[Senka]

Very cool! Is that an eye he's holding?

With the chainmail cloak, you used noisemaker yes? Did you use 3d or UV projection, and did you apply the noise to the mesh or just leave it in editing mode? I'm assuming you applied it because there are lots of blurred areas where it looks like the topology is stretched so it can't maintain the level of detail you've got going.

If I were you, I'd go back to before you applied the noise, then either not apply it, or remesh / retopo the cloak and then apply the noise. Glove looks pretty weird too. Might want to go with fabric for that. Also maybe the chainmail could use some sharp specular? Eyes are excellent, though I feel the beard should be more clumpy / dirty, it looks as if he's a shampoo model almost :P

You might even want to work over the dirt details on the hand, make them a bit more flecked / random? They look quite good at the moment but some spots are rather uniform and solid, going over with a specky alpha and low RGB value might help break it up. If you use layers think of this as a mottle layer.

Also if you want to play around with Sub Surface Scattering or just a different material for the skin, from lightbox go demoprojoects -> SSS_Startup and load that. Now if you load your character, in the Material selecction there is a material called ZSkin01. Use that for your skin and search around for SSS tutorials for a quick guide to setting it up.

One last thing, the eye wrinkles are quite obviously brush strokes, so maybe go over them again, smooth the ends, maybe pinch the middle, just break them up a little. Hope this helps dude! Characters are LOTS of work, I've spent nearly 2 months (Since I started, not total time, I'd only work on it on and off) on my character =/

[voodoodad]

Senka, thanks for your comments. The robe and glove aren't intended to be chainmail. They're something like wool with a black and white pattern. I didn't go for an exact match on the clothing, but I don't think it looks that bad. He's holding a pipe, by the way. Also, I was mussing up his hair as the last thing since it's kind of difficult to get right. About the sss, for now I'm just trying to put out some decent looking busts without trying to learn anything other than the very basics of rendering. I'm teaching myself Zbrush from the ground up and I think I'm finally getting the basics of sculpting down so I'll start delving in to the bells and whistles soon.



Here's an update with lightcaps and a few nudges here and there.

[voodoodad]

After a few more tweaks here's the final render.

[voodoodad]

Here's "Bilbo" again with better lighting and hopefully the color uploads correctly this time.