First attempts

[voodoodad]

Tor looks a little better (better being a relative term) in the original black and white. At least to me...

[SpiritDreamer]

Hi VoodooDad
Just stopping by to say..enjoy your sketchbook, and i'm enjoying it ....Great start..

Funny,..I recognized that Tor Joshson piece of yours right off the bat, before seeing the refference...Had'nt thought about him in ages...He was a great childhood memory for me in those old B movies that were so great when I was a kid..many many moons ago..LOL...Good seeing him again..
Your Sin City character came out pretty good I think..could be refined futher, but hey, it's a good start, and that's what counts...Better to refine something that is solid in the beginning than to try to refine something that is not.
On your Master study...You can't go wrong studying them......Keep refineing areas like the roundness of the face in general.the broadness of his jaw muscle in relation to his chin....The hard edge of his upper lip in relation to the soft edge of his lower lip...The wideness of his nose around the nostal area, and the actual shape of his nostals, which are a key element to his expressed emotion...Flared Nostrals../...Realy consentrate on what's actually happening in the eyes, concerning the lower eyelids and upper eyelids and their relationship to each other, the angles that give a sense of receeding inward and coming out and forward...More hair also...All of those little details in form and volume,... and the close study of them while you do your studying will really pay off, when doing studies of the Masters Works..
Anyway,...I'm looking forward to seeing where this journy leads you to...ZBRUSH is a Great tool to learn with and from...Makes both a real pleasure, and the journy an adventure...Keep up the great progress...
Glenn

[voodoodad]

Spiritdreamer: Thank you so much for your reply. I don't want to offend any of the few who have posted here, but I'm truly thrilled to receive a helpful response from an artist whose work I admire as much as I do yours!

Okay, now that I've gotten through my bit of gratuitous sucking up, I can begin to address your very welcome tips.

1. Tor was pretty easy actually. Pretty much a symmetrical blob of clay on the screen with a nose, mouth and eyes and it couldn't help but have at least a passing resemblance to him.

2. Marv is a major favorite of mine, but I'm not entirely satisfied with everything there. His various scars and wrinkles came out a bit too unnatural looking for what I wanted, and his head is too long and narrow overall. I did a render of him in the wet clay mat, and I thought he looked a lot better, but still not quite what I wanted. But I'll continue working on him and post shots of any progress made.

3. David... What can I say about David without making it sound like I'm making excuses for not correcting things that looked wrong even as I was doing them... Heh, I had his jawline worked out with the roundness you suggested, but I swear to god he came out looking exactly like Jay Leno! I even briefly considered posting a shot of that and saying it was Leno, but I wanted to do something that resembled art and not a fanboy sculpt for a change. His eyes are too small, too. To me, his eyes always reminded me of Elijah Woods', but I just couldn't get them to look good going any bigger than I did.

Anyway, my wife gave me Zbrush Character Creation as an early Christmas present yesterday and even though I'm only a couple of chapters in I've already learned at least fifty things that I didn't know before. So keep on the lookout here, I'll be posting again soon.

[voodoodad]

Quick 'n dirty sculpt of the Joker. Wanted to experiment with lighting in Zbrush.

I like it but one thing though, I just found out that matcaps and the Zbrush lighting systems aren't on speaking terms. Is there a good place to download standard mats the do work well with a light setup?

[voodoodad]

Now with 100% more lightcap goodness! I've really got to start discovering these things faster...


Left side done with lightcaps, right side with standard Zbrush lighting. The only other difference is the background is turned off for the lightcap render.

[voodoodad]

I am going to marry lightcaps and bare its children!

Tor again, looking sooo much closer to the "real" thing.

"Time for to go to bed!" ~ ***8203;Tor Johnson

[voodoodad]

A few more tweaks to the face and added a simple curved plane to serve as the shoulders. Next, I need to figure out how to wrap the chains around his neck and shoulders.

[voodoodad]

I'm really enjoying this one.
One question for my loyal followers. When I use lightcaps, my material seems to pick up a distinct "shininess" that I don't want. In this case it's Matcap White Cavity. I've fiddled with every setting I can think of, but just can't seem to flatten it out. I would really appreciate some tips here.

[fj8e5la]

You could change the matcap's texture map. A darker part in the upper middle.

[voodoodad]

Working on something for my oldest son. He loves Frazetta as much as I do and this is loosely based on Frazetta's Kane series. And I've been wanting to do something with fairly intricate detail since Coridium's excellent metal jewelry detailing tutorial.

C&C is always welcome.

[SpiritDreamer]

Hi.. VoodooDad.

Hey,..Great start on the Frazetta piece for your son.....Really looking forward to seeing the progress on it..
Glenn

[voodoodad]

Spiritdreamer; thanks once again for your comments. They really mean a lot to me.

To the community in general, I'll apologize right now for making frequent posts with what, to some, seem to be minor updates. But please understand that I was out of the art world since I graduated high school (30+ years now) and what seems minor to the true pros here are (to me at least) huge steps.

I had a horrible week where I didn't feel like I was making any progress on any of my projects. Things didn't come out like I wanted them to, meshes would inexplicably self destruct.... on and on...

To make a long story short, (far too late, I know) I finally feel like I've been able to shift out of second gear and I'm racing down the Zbrush hiway again.

Whew, I'm long-winded sometimes!

Anyway... now on to the update! Detailing tips for the newly added wings would be very appreciated.

[voodoodad]

Between Christmas and playing The Old Republic I haven't had much time for sculpting, but I feel I've made a little progress. Tell me what you think.

[voodoodad]

Trying something different here. I'm currently roughing out a sketch based on the movie version of Tolkien's balrog. My biggest problems when working on things like this are in getting the details to look right. Specifically around eyes and the teeth/gums areas. I think on this one I'm getting the eyelids pretty well blocked in, but the outlining around the gums and teeth just doesn't look like I want it too. I need tips on what brushes to use and at least some vague directions on how to use them.

Please leave comments.

[Crevasse]

Hey man looks great!
One thing I would suggest would be to do stuff like the eyes and teeth and even the gums as separate subtools. it really helps a lot with mesh density and flow etc.
Its a good rule to follow that if it's a separate object make it a different subtool. You could put all the teeth on the same subtool but it's really good to have them as actual teeth rather than coming out of your model
lets zbrush work to the best of it's extent.