More wip, thanks very much, and ramble on, enjoying reading your posts alot. The Black Blue image is cool, it almost looks like resin or glass, with light coming right through the material. Is that all painted on?
The translucent materials are the prototypes right off the machine.
If you see the seams, they are where the segments were laminated together.
I really didn’t know if I could afford to do the prototype and stay on budget.
The next project I do for Bowen after Pyro will be the comics version of War Machine so I am really looking forward to 3.5 so I can take advantage of the hard surface brushes…can’t wait!
Here is the beginning of batman’s head…I I just started with a basic zsphere then
essentially pasted it onto the body. As I am focused exclusively on rp output, I don’t worry about topology and such but that is changing.
I work across many packages in order to get the results I need but basically all of my form development and real sculpting is done in zbrush. I will draw construction lines on the clay as if I were working in water clay or plastiline…I also am very much involved in classical drawing and also have carving experience so I try to rake my forms into shape as if I was crosshatching a very structured drawing or carving stone with a toothed chisel.
For a while I really just approached sculpting in zbrush as the ultimate form of 3d drawing. My foundation is very heavily weighted in the European academic tradition and I did years and years of cast drawing (have a bunch of drawings on my site)…sculpting with zbrush lets me access that base in a very satisfactory way.
here are some quick screen grabs i just made digging through my working files…I have permission to show certain images but others I am not sure of so sorry if there’s not more step by step stuff…
here’s some pyro stuff
and the Gotham series…
I started batman off more gritty but tried to simplify and make it more sculptural…I am constanlty thinking of big, monumental constructive forms when I work…
My main goal when doing this kind of work is to satisfy the needs and directions of my clients while making it as fun to sculpt as possible…
Very inspiring and phenomenal work! Your figures on your site are most impressive, love your anatomy sculpts. Keep up the cool stuff! 
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Hello Joseph i have a question ! how to you make a joints for mold process ?
Thanks a lot !
Basically you have to make a keyed joint, just like a physical sculpture.
I just sketched this up for you…it’s really simple actually…
Wow very cool work man…the sculpts look great and very clean - and thx for the extra info
really cool job you have - top notch man :D
Not sure if I missed it but which printers are you using …do you own any printers ?
Some nice insights into what’s involved to create the final product. Thanks for sharing!
the rapid prototyping world has changed incredibly in the past two years
Perfactory is the best tech out there for detail…
It doesn’t make sense for an artist to buy a machine yet because the outsourcing costs have come down so far…
the machines are crazy expensive
I see a day when 3d printers will be just as easy to get at inkjets and equally affordable.
I’ve been in on this rp stuff professionally for years and it’s just getting better and better…
Nice torso wip of Pyro, interesting to see the direction you use for the raking, and the large features that you establish on the batman head. The mention you made of monument sculpting interested me, simply put to explain why, I notice the ease at which I can sketch a 80 mm figure but it becomes increasingly difficult as it scales up to 1:16 and beyond, in drawing and sculpting. It must be a technique that you work on over time to get those vast sized planes to represent the forms that you are after. I checked out your site some cool work, and warmachine is going to be fun to work on by the look of the image that google threw up.
These turned out great! always cool to see it come to life
Very cool work, and many thanks for sharing the process and talking about rapid-prototyping/3d printing… I think it’s something everyone around here is very interested in 
Try to say the most you can with the utmost economy of shape and working at any scale will be easier.
Many people rightfully love the Lanteri books but Slobodkin and Zorach are very cool, too especially for thinking about monumental approaches to sculpture.
I try to think about sculpture as poetry with shapes…detail can be added according to taste but the underlying structure is key. All just IMO…
Bourdelle is great to look at for this kind of stuff…
Thanks very much. I’ve got the Lanteri books and Luchessi, and will have a look at Bourdelle, Slobodkin and Zorach. Ryan Kingslien and Zac Petrov have been extremly helpful as well as Scott Eaton and John Brown, because of the commentary and 3 dimensional nature of their instructional material.
I just discovered “How to draw the Marvel way”, which would have been helpful when it was published, so Buscema and Byrne are my focus at the moment and in the same vein as what you have suggested about economy of shape, the economy of line in their art is a great benchmark that I’m trying to follow strictly, before going back to clay and ZBrush. Thanks again for the feedback.
Thanks for request ! Joseph ! my last question is you merge the joint object direct in zbrush sculpt for print ? Thanks and sorry for lot questions ! :o
NP, m0delista…
yes, using subtool master or just export the fit part with the part of the model that it’s feathered into as a single file.
I have a proprietary system that I employ but this maya to zb method works just as well.
It really depends on what your client will ask you for.
If you are “just” making a statue, you don’t even have to worry about this stuff.
It’s doing articulated models where it starts to get whacky…and painful:(
Every client is going to ask you to prep a model in a slightly different way and some will ask you not to touch it at all.
Thanks Bro !
Wonderful, Love the Mephisto, John Buscema a huge favorite. Everything looks great!
m0delista, np and feel free to pm me with any specific questions anytime or email me at the address on my site.
Jim, thank you very much. This thread has turned out to be a mini John Buscema appreciation society…very cool. Thanks for checking it out.
FANTASTIC pieces man!! I’ve always loved your stuff, so its awesome to see you sharing it here to more people in zbcentral. The joker piece has a very Lyendecker feel to it…I’ve always wished that style to make it more in CG.
Really good stuff here.
Wish someone would do some Legion of Super Heroes sculpts.
I’m a huge Wildfire fan wearing the costume that Dave Cokrum (I know his last name is misspelled, the forum didn’t like that extra “c” in there 
) created and Mike Grell improved upon. Alex Ross paid a nice homage to the LSH and turns out he’s a huge fan of that super group as well!!
I’m a 48 year old comic book NUT and have been collecting since I was 7 years old!! Don’t have most of them any more, you know I’d have to rent another apt. just to store them all if I did!! :lol: