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My first sculpt attempt... please criticize ;)

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#21

That musculature is looking really solid, particularly in the upper arms and torso area. I need to do a full one of these myself, I keep doing partial studies then moving on to the fun stuff… gotta pay my dues! :slight_smile:

The head could definitely use a bit of work. Take a closer look at the planes of the lips and how they blend into the face, right now they’re a bit too flat and their edges are too uniform. The chin cleft may be a bit too exaggerated given how realistic you’ve been with the other muscles.

Nice work, I’ll be following this one and maybe following your example. :slight_smile:

#22

The knees and ankles are too skinny, the jaw is too small. The front of him is very muscular but the back is completely flat. Also pay attention to your shoulders, they come out too far. Just look at some references and you’ll get it right.
Other than that the front of him is done very well. Good work on the hands.

#23

Nice progress. I agree about the legs/ankles being too skinny. Has a case of top heaviness going on ;). If this is your first male sculpt, you are doing a great job. I noticed some good books referenced in this thread but I’ll go ahead and add another one for you…Artistic Anatomy by Dr. Paul Richer. I have been using this book for some time now along with all the other books mentioned in this thread. I would also recommend trying out real world modeling with plasteline clay or water based clay. I learned anatomy building an écorché which IMO was the most concrete way of learning. Digital is great, don’t get me wrong, but the physical experience makes an impression in the brain for some reason. Any how, great model and nice detail. I’d be interested to know how you created the palm alpha.

#24

Thanks for the critique… I agree about the chin cleft… in fact, something about it was bothering me, but couldn’t put my finger on it. I think I"m starting to realize that it’s OK to smooth something out (save first though lol) to see it more abstractly. Thanks!! :slight_smile:

#25

Hmm… not sure about the knees and ankles… take a look at the attached frontal non-perspective view and tell me if you still think so. …maybe the ankle area could use a touch more volume, but I think I like the knees as is, size wise. Regarding the jaw - you might be right - but I can’t see where to add volume to keep it realistic… I’ve tried a few iterations on that and settled with this… any suggestions?

The back - VERY good observation - thank you. I googled “bodybuilder back” and you’re absolutely right. Not nearly enough volume for the various muscle groups… not when compared with the front. Rear deltoids, traps (back portion) and rhomboids all need more volume. He’s got a “lean biker’s back” with a “lean bodybuilder’s front” lol. (Someone’s been neglecting his deadlifts and rows!!! hahaha) Thanks!! Now this guy might have overdone it a bit… http://allmuscle.blogspot.com/2011/01/roelly-winklaar-back-photo.html hahahaha :wink:

The shoulders are typical bodybuilderish by design - to enhance appearance of overall size and v taper. Not sure of they come down the arm too far? I hadn’t thought so - anyone else have a take on this?

Anyhow - to see the knee proportions without perspective:
Front Flat.jpg

#26

Making great progress! Better than I could do, heh. But the feet and ankles still look too small to me.

#27

Thanks! This is actually my first sculpt ever… let alone a male sculpt. (Well, aside from a couple of goofy test sculpts when I was first trying out sculptris… I started this guy in sculptris, and moved to ZBrush after I had a base mesh going.) I’ve done modelling in lightwave for several years now, but that process is much more “CAD” and much less “sculpting”… and so I always completely sucked at organic modelling in lightwave… could never “do” people before at all - nothing even closely resembling the human form lol. So I’ll probably stick to LW for hard surface modelling that isn’t part of a character, since I’m so used to it… but for organic modelling and situations where hard surface modelling is part of an organic model, I can’t NOT use ZBrush at this point. (Besides, my wife would kill me - she let me buy ZBrush somewhat begrudgingly hahaha - so I best use the heck out of it :wink: )

Regarding the palm and finger alphas, here’s the skin detailing brushes I created (they need a little tweaking, so I’ll be reposting them once I have them “perfect”, but here they are as they are now) - some of the alphas for them came with ZBrush, some I made myself by sculpting in a 2D plane and generating the alphas. I’m also uploading my finger/palm print alpha library I created. Most are created from photos I googled, and one (the generic pattern) was generated using SFinGe, a fingerprint generator by an Italian biometrics lab. There’s a free edition that generates one fingerprint at a time, and a paid version that generates massive libraries. The fingerprints they generate aren’t antialiased, so it takes considerable post processing in Photoshop, but it works.

http://www.ryniak.net/external/zbrushcontent/fingerprint_alphas.zip
http://www.ryniak.net/external/zbrushcontent/robbs_skin_brushes.zip

Enjoy!!

#28

Hmm… I’m starting to really rethink the ankle area, lol. Been far too many comments to ignore :wink:

#29

btw Justin… just took a look at your gallery at davis3d… you’re extremely talented!!! Holy crap!! awesome stuff!

#30

Just studying the knees a bit… I see what you guys mean… from the front, they look fine, from the back, they dip in too far, creating the illusion of “weak knees” with big calves flowing too far down to the knee then back out to the hams. So, the needs need more volume in the back, in general. :slight_smile:

#31

In my opinion, from the front the knees still look too skinny. They need more overall mass. If the character was a bodybuilder in cutting phase, then maybe they would be alright due to the lack of bodyfat, but the rest of the body looks like it is not in the cutting phase so the knees need to be thicker.

More importantly, I think you should get your proportions right. The torso is too big in proportion to the rest of his body, which also causes the problem of his legs being too far apart at the hips. This makes his arms and head look too small in comparison.
Also, move his shoulders closer to his body, they are too far out.

#33

I truly appreciate all the comments and criticisms… as always you guys give me great stuff to contemplate!! :smiley: For a good sense of proportion, I think I’ll actually take measurements in Photoshop and see how they compare to similar “real world” physiques, measured in the same way. I’m curious how far off things are, especially in the legs, knees and feet. I really want to get this right… stylized a bit of course, not necessarily a “regular guy”, but an “extreme mesomorph”. Think similar to Arnold in terms of V-taper, but not quite as big:

Schwarzenegger.jpg

#34

So… I decided to take your advice and go ahead and try to alter the proportions a bit by widening the hips slightly and narrowing the shoulders and thorax a touch… to see how much I could “regularify” his shape and give him better balance, while maintaing the ultra mesomorph character to him. I figured what the heck, transpose is a great and easy tool, wouldn’t even have to do much to it just to see… and honestly, it made a huge visual impact on the realism side, but did not detract from his ultra mesomorphishness… at all. Yay ZBrush peeps! :smiley: You steered me right.

I’ll post pics soon… after Christmas I think… there’s more I want to do to him before I post an updated pic, including monkeying with the legs a bit. Stay tuned!

#35

Oookaaaayyy… soo… I decided I couldn’t wait til after Christmas, so I got to work on it today. Good way to stay awake :wink: Anyhow, after having the positive experience with bringing the shoulders and upper thorax in closer to the body, I decided to take everyone’s advice. I changed everything that was suggested in this thread (that I could remember offhand anyhow :o, lol), backed up my sculpt first and made the following changes:

  1. Brought the shoulders & upper thorax (upper pecs and lats) in a touch.

  2. Widened the hips a touch too.

  3. Found out my guy was 7.75 heads tall… well within Vetruvian man specs, but I measured a bunch of friends pictures in photoshop and the average came out to 7, and none were over 7.3!! What was Leonardo DaVinci thinking with EIGHT?? Geez!! :stuck_out_tongue: lol Anyhow, I decided on 7.25 heads tall to match a couple of bodybuilder friends whose head/body ratio I liked for my sculpt. So I engorged the head a bit.

  4. Assuming my sculpt is 6 foot tall, I calculated my guy’s shoe size as it was to be a miniscule SIZE SEVEN. OK, you were right… the poor guy had small feet… lol. So, upped that to about size 11 1/2. Enlarged the ankles and lower part of the legs to match (below the gastroc).

  5. Added some muscle volume to his back.

  6. I beefed up the entire knee region. Now that I see it… yes… yes, you guys were right. :stuck_out_tongue: lol (Thank you!)

  7. I also fixed a bunch of musculature issues that were either incomplete or that I found wrong (having thought it was complete), no big, but like anything, took a little time. All in all, I think the sculpt has been greatly enhanced by everyone’s suggestions, so thanks!! (And thank you to Transpose too haha) Honestly, at the moment, his feet look huge to me, but I’m sure that’s only because I’m used to it the other way.

Well, I’m learning as I go, and I am grateful to have people here willing to give me pointers, you all rock! :smiley:

So, here’s the update:
front.jpg
back.jpg

#36

I’ve quickly liquified your image with some recommendations.

http://i.imgur.com/2EhCD.jpg

I think his arms need to be bigger. Sure, they are ripped, but his chest and legs are very large and muscular. If his chest is rigged, then the rest of the body should be just as large. This is why his calves should also be a little bigger.
The other main thing which could be fixed pretty quickly is his face. If you copy a reference you should be fine. Its also a good idea to pick a characterized face reference, not some perfect looking manicured face. It gives the model a much more interesting look.

Otherwise it looks way better than it did before. Good work.

#37

Thanks once again for the input, Justin :slight_smile: I like what you did with the face in particular - amazing how such a small change can completely transform a face. That said, while I like the look you created by narrowing the chin, I’m not sure if it’s what I’m after - I was intentionally trying to create a strong chin and jawline for a look of physical prowess. Perhaps a cross between the two? I’ll have to play with it. Regarding the arms, I had been thinking about that. I think the bicep size is appropriate, but the triceps might need some enhancement. In general, from a bodybuilding point of view, the tris should be a little bigger than the bi’s… probably more rounded, just more volume in general. I think that might be the way to beef his arms up without changing the bicep size - I think the visual effect would be the same. Again, I’ll have to play with it. The one thing that really threw me was your drawing down of the front deltoids. I was wondering why you did that… so I double checked with some strength training anatomy books I have (Which I bought over a year ago for bodybuilding, not sculpting, and they’re the only anatomy books I currently own - not for long though!) and I think the reason you felt that needed filled in is because something is missing there. The coracobrachialis. My guy doesn’t have a pair… at all. How did I miss that?? haha… all good… just gotta put some in. That will fill the volume in the location where you pulled down the front deltoids. Thanks again!! :smiley:

#38

I’have been trying to learn and use zbrush for about 4 month and to tell you the truth i can’t do that as of yet. I don’t know how you do it i have watched tons of tutorials and i can’t do human anatomy at all all my human anatomy models suck and worst if is based of a zpheres so you should be glad… what you have done it’s amazing for a beginner:+1:small_orange_diamond:cry:.

#39

I should also mention the purpose of this sculpt… it’s two fold:


  1. Get familiar with and gain experience with the process from round ball to fully detailed and textured finished product, and…
  2. Make him fairly generic in terms of expression and retopologize with proper edge loops, etc., so the low poly retopologized mesh will become my new base mesh for all future muscular male models. (Sure, I could use someone else’s base mesh, but then it wouldn’t be “all my own work”.)
Due to reason #2, I’m not inclined to give him a very interesting face. At least not in form. (Surface details won’t affect retopology, so that’s open.) Maybe I will once I’ve retopo’d it. :smiley: Or maybe I’ll change my mind yet again… haha. :wink:

#40

Il will try to correct it. But please, if you do not want to sculpt a *****, at least leave a shape that’s in proportion with all the rest. This obsessive emasculation is a mental disease that is incompatible with art.

arlynet@gmail.com

if you wanna know what i mean go have a look on this http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Y719OL9OJr4/TsgjZ6MEHoI/AAAAAAAACVA/HxmHab539RI/s1600/trois.jpg

#41

Well, thanks for the offer, but I think I’ll keep working on it by myself. :wink: If you look at my two points at why I’m doing this, you’ll see that this being my first sculpt, I want to learn the process from top to bottom.

Now, regarding your comment about my guy’s missing junk, lol… my focus on this has not been to create a “final sculpt” all on it’s own, but to create a base mesh and at the same time learn the process from beginning to end. I hadn’t decided what to do about the genitals because it won’t be present in the finished base mesh… not that I have an objection, but because I don’t want them all to look the same AND if I do a piece that’s clothed (much more likely) I’ll have less work to do… since then I’ll have to cut off his junk to accommodate the pants, which would be pulling and squishing all that manly goodness into a more confined space. Unless he’s wearing boxers of course. :rolleyes: Further, leaving the junk off for now also allows me to post freely in this and other forums without offending, not to mention my two young daughters which are following along on my progress… it’s just not appropriate at this time. Granted, in an ideal world, no one would ever be offended by the presentation of nudity, but would only view depictions of sexual acts as what needs to be curtailed based on age and audience appropriateness and sensitivities. But it’s not a perfect world, and I feel compelled to work within the confines of social moires in order to maintain a certain fluidity of existence. (Less feathers ruffled.)

THAT ALL SAID… I have NO problem with people including that very important aspect of male anatomy in their pieces… if this were a “final piece” unto itself, I’d gladly have included it already. So, this isn’t about some fear of masculinity (I should hope not, or my own nads might take offense!) or unwillingness to sculpt that area of the body.

Sorry if my leaving off his junk for the time being offends you, but it is what it is.

[[[[[[ after a pause ]]]]]]

Ok, I decided to go ahead and fix it for you, enjoy :wink: : www.ryniak.net/external/2011-12-22/funny.jpg