First Ever Sculpt, Looking for Feedback

[smoky]

Hey everyone, first time ever posting here, looking to get some criticism and feedback on my first ever real project in Zbrush: Himon, the Glyphwalker.

A tiny bit of backstory on the character, who comes from an old D&D story with a few friends from years back. He’s a former slave, but a well-educated, special one from an ancient part of the world, serving proudly and dutifully as a scribal assistant to his court sorcerer master. When an uprising occurred in the land he refused to flee, and was mutilated along with his master by the rebels to ensure he could not cast any magic, before being crucified and left to die on a distant hill. Unable to speak, he used his own blood as ink to inscribe a glyph into the hill and save himself from death with dark magic. He fled and remained in hiding for centuries using this magic to sustain himself, until his soul sensed quiet whispers of the return of his master’s spirit…

Some details on the sculpt:

• The arm proportions are intentional as is the overall musculature, and are supposed to be a sort of reflection of the physical distortion and hypertrophy as a result of the magic. By all means though if something is egregiously off-sized or just aesthetically displeasing let me know, that’s why I’m posting this after all.
  
• The horns were left as is because being totally honest, I’m just a tad burnt out with this guy, and handmodeling all the details I originally wanted just seemed like a total bear. That and also, I figured polypainting them simultaneously seemed like a smart approach, and I have no idea how to do that yet.
  
• The fingers and toes are similarly left unfinished. He’s supposed to have a claw-nail hybrid for each of these, but for the reason above I just didn’t get there. This is by far the part of the sculpt I am personally most displeased with, and am considering just doing a very high detail hand sculpt for a next project just to learn.
  
• He should have ear “holes” and vestiges of the auricular cartilage similar in style to the nose and mouth, just didn’t see that as too crucial so I put that off too.
  
• Muscle striations are hard. I’m pretty satisfied with the face details but couldn’t get anything to look consistent elsewhere, starting with the right biceps which turned out like crumpled paper and the left pectoral which looks stringier than I was going for. I decided to stop there for fear of distorting the main shapes of the model elsewhere beyond recognition, at least until I got some feedback. If anyone has any tips for this I’d greatly appreciate it.
  

As far as workflow and process goes, the main complaint is that this just took forever. Been chiseling away at this for nearly 3 weeks at a pretty heavy amount per day, probably summing to ~150 hours if I had to guess. Huge chunks of that were just learning the UI, the basis of the program, and other noob things so I’m hoping that for the next piece I can get to this same point in at most half the time.

In any case, I absolutely appreciate any and all comments on it, even if it’s “Nice” or “Boo”. Thanks in advance everyone.

Attachments

[Mastersensible]

Hi. Here are my 2 cents.

Polypainting at the same time you’re sculpting: sounded a good idea to me, too. For what I’ve tested, it’s not that gain of a time unless you know what color scheme you’d like to apply to your sculp beforehand. To do it, it’s very easy. While you are editing a tool (ie in the process of sculpting), hold your spacebar. A popup appears. Just besides the Zadd and Zsub buttons, appears a ‘rgb’ button, a ‘M’ button, and a ‘Mrgb’ button. click on the rgb button if you want to paint color along as the deformation (Zadd or Zsub depending on your brush and if you’re holding the Alt key). To paint material along with color, hit the Mrgb button instead. Unclick the Zadd or Zsub button if you want to paint only and not sculpt.

I would suggest to sculp a model in T-pose first. Go T-pose reasonnably thouroughly before posing it. The good old T-pose or DaVinci pose is great to have a clear view on proportion, hence making sure no bits are lacking. For instance, I would say there’s a problem in the articulation of the erectus spinae and the glute. I would lay in a bony landmark of the sacrum bone on the back&ASIS on the front. Yep, I feel the whole sacrum region is missing on your model.
Also, the T-pose allows you easily to sculpt the armpits. You will probably solve some issues by setting the armpit, hence visualizing the side of the ribcage.
You can go to your pose through Zsphere rigging or through Transpose once you’re willing to go out of X-axis symmetry.

[smoky]

Awesome, thanks for the tips. I’ve looked into polypainting a bit, just have no experience. I figured it would definitely save time for things like ridges, veins, etc. but I see your point for sure. I’ll keep it in mind.

I actually did start this guy off in a T-pose, but I feel like I just didn’t carry through with it nearly far enough. Based on bad experiences with the difficulties of bone weighting in other modeling programs from back in high school, I figured extensive remodeling was going to be necessary after posing anyway, especially given the high muscularity. I’m pretty sure while that’s still correct, I could have absolutely drawn it out far more, like you said, and had less assymetry with detail (in the wrong spots). The sacrum in particular was tough. Initially I had that placed but after reviewing references and digging through things, it really just doesn’t seem to be too apparent for extreme muscularity in this particular pose. I’m also unhappy with the general result, but I kind of chalked it up as just a trick of my mind since I wasn’t familiar with it. I guess even if it is just a trick, if it just looks bad in general that’s enough to fix it. After all, it’s not supposed to be accurate for scientific anatomy, it’s supposed to convey an idea.

Thanks for the reply.