Anatomy study - Feedback always appreciated!

[nateMercieca]

Hello everyone! I’ve begun my first kind of formal anatomy study. It’s been a relatively quiet semester so far, so I’ve had the opportunity to finally buckle down on sculpting.

I’ve been working on this skull for a while now, but I think I rushed through the musculature a bit too fast. Some of the proportions feel off, maybe the lips and eyes? Everything is a little lumpy on top of it all, so I’ll probably go back through an devote some time to cleaning it all up.

The goal after this will be a fully fleshed out bust on top of everything, now that I have a little deeper understanding of why the face is shaped the way it is. I didn’t want to get too far along without some feed back though, so any critiques would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks!

Nate

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[Vir_Norin]

Looks good to me. Good work. The nasal muscles appear odd when cartilages of the nose are not present so they are just floating.
Also, there is one muscle that is often omitted by anatomy books (right now I cannot even find a proper image). It is called Malaris. It is the most lateral band of the Orbicularis oculi that originates from the outer orbital rim and attaches to the bottom part of the nasolabial fold just near the mouth node (close to insertion of Zygomaticus major). According to Goldfinger it helps Zygomaticus when smiling or, when acting alone, is responsible for restrained or suppressed smile.

PS Also the mental protuberance (the chin) might project a little more forward. And nasal opening can be higher (meaning that nasal bones appear a bit elongated, but that’s my IMHO)

[nateMercieca]

Thanks a ton for the feedback Vir! I agree that the nasal muscles floating are a little odd., I’m not sure why I didn’t just model in the nose with everything else. That’s strange about the malaris. I was following along with Goldfinger’s book (what an incredible resource!), and its peculiar that he omits it as it’s own page, but alludes to it through the rest of the drawings. I’ll be sure to get it in there this afternoon. I’ll try pulling up the nasal opening a bit too and see how it looks.

Thanks again!

[Andre_Lopes]

Careful with the base of the nose and the other points of contact like the back of the skull

[nateMercieca]

Hey Andre! Thank you so much for the wonderful graphic! I started trying to sculpt a bust around the skull and muscles shortly after posting this and began to realize how disproportionate everything was. It’s kind of a bummer backtracking so far, but its definitely a good lesson nonetheless! Hopefully I’ll have more time soon to fix it up and keep chugging along. The skull you posted should prove quite helpful in the coming days. Thanks again!

[Andre_Lopes]

It’s not a perfect skull the image i posted but was just to prove a point x) You have good reference books to look out for like:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/81VLIZUuvTL.jpg

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/81MU8KiXPrL.jpg

These will give great detail in sculpting the head in terms of proportion.

http://www.anatomy360.info/skull-sketcher/ good app.

Now if you are really doing something different from the regular skull, different race, i suggest searching for that specific skull
I am also studying the skull in an amazing workshop but it’s in Portuguese.

Keep up the good work!

[nateMercieca]

I do have Sarah Simblet’s book, I should have been more diligent in following along with an actual book instead of looking at google images exclusively for reference. I started pushing and pulling the skull a bit today, hopefully over the weekend I can work a lot more on it. That skull sketcher is really awesome too, thanks for linking that!

[Andre_Lopes]

you’re welcome

[nateMercieca]

Finally had a chance to touch this guy up a bit and add a bust around it. It definitely still needs some attention in a few areas, but I’ll unfortunately be pretty occupied with school work for a bit. As always, critiques would be greatly appreciated. Thanks to those who helped out with much needed advice!

[Andre_Lopes]

This is coming better

The eyes are a bit too high. It’s not an absolute rule, you can move a pinch or more from this some times but look:

The eyes are on the middle of the whole head. The “mustache” or top lip, in the middle of the middle and the end of the lower lip in the middle of the middle of the middle xD (Red Lines).
This is all Andrew Loomis teaching my friend and he’s like the master Your nostrils also look like ( ) when they shouldn’t. Look at your references and take a closer look

Keep up the progress your doing great! Make lines like these in real photos to understand proportions too. It will help you visualize these things more clearly

[nateMercieca]

Thanks again for your help Andre! I’ll keep a closer eye on my reference and take everything you said into consideration. Loomis is incredible, I didn’t realize that his books are online so I’ll have to check those out soon too! I’ve been working hard to redo some older projects for critiques from a guest lecturer that will be coming to our school soon (none other than Zack Petroc!!! One of my idols, I’m so excited!), but this is definitely one of the things I want to show him when he gets here so I will definitely be hitting it hard again soon!

[Andre_Lopes]

You are welcome

[nateMercieca]

Finally had some more time to work on this guy. I started flushing out the neck muscles and re-tweaking proportions on the head. I had the pleasure of getting critiques on it from Zack Petroc from Disney who mentioned the sternocleidomastoid shouldn’t be curved like it is, and is probably too thick/tapers oddly. Looks like the backside of the platysma is poking through the front as well, so I’ll have to fix that.

Here’s a link to a turntable too if anyone wants to see some of the lower muscles.

https://vimeo.com/160315518

As always, critiques are greatly appreciated!