Thanks pygmalion!
Yep, everything is based on the original image to be used as the texture. It makes you walk a fine line between pulling out the object and not stretching the textures.
I will initially create a B&W mask (or sometimes masks) to completely isolate the sculpting areas and protect the rest of the card.
For the cartoony ones, I pretty much just begin sculpting at this point. Also, for these types I may also make a few different height maps to better separate the different elevations before I start sculpting.
For the figures and busts, the workflow I’ve been using is to match my ZB document size to the texture image and then load it into the background. I’ll then create a mostly rough (but accurate to the image) model keeping in mind the actual positioning in space relative to the image and once that is matched as close as I can and has a nice low to medium detail level, I’ll render with bpr and grab the ZDepth map. Then using masking and the deformation sliders I’ll pull out the initial sculpt and have a very good starting point for the relief. It might seem a bit overkill to do it this way but it is very easy to distort the texture image while sculpting so, semi-automating the bulk of the initial relief really minimizes this.
Then it’s just a matter of finalizing the sculpt and cleaning up the areas where the card and sculpt meet. It’s very easy to pull the background up with the relief so some time needs to be spent cleaning this up. To help with that I will usually make a morph target before I ever begin at the highest SUBd level and then I will use a mask and the morph brush to knock some areas back to flat.
I need to get more photos of the printed models and share those as well. One I have posted above can be seen here: http://zverse.com/product/marcus-lattimore-adversity-quantz
Thanks for the interest and comments, man!
And yes, Go ****s! <—I also find it hilarious that this is auto censored 
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