This is an experiment I did to see if I could replicate skin textures. I originally used Zbrush on the Fight Club Xbox game for Normal Mapped characters. 
well, let me be the first to say wow.
what is your process btw? you use a skin texture to initially bump out a bit of the wrinkles for you, and then paint? or you got any special alphas?
or is it all manual work?
its exceptional work!. keep it up.
Happy to be the next in line to say “Wow!”. The detail on the skin is amazing, very well done. I’m curious to know your process as well…as a Zbrush newbie it’s great to see these wonderfull models and details. Very inspirational!
wow times 10…well looks like you got the skin and hair right for sure…I will definitely be watching to see if you can give any tips that went into the creation of this piece…
Well let wait for new outcomes¡
Andreseloy
Amazing! I use zbrush for the same purposes. Could you show a normalmapped rendering of this guy? Maybe with max shaders? ANd the low res base?
Does your compagny allow you to publish your production works??
How did you do the hairs? Could you give some infos?
You seem to have used the pinch and inflat tool, right?
I’ve noticed they had inpredectables reuslts in realtime, because uv are not pinch on the low res, and wrinkles seems larger than in the high res, as if they werent pinched…
Hey Jim, great work, and I have see you do it with clay too!
I guess all of us clay pushers are finding our way to Zbrush! (seen Monstermaker?)
PATTON
Amazing! I’d ask you about the poly count .
Jim,
That is very good skin modeling. I’d love to know which technique you use. For example is it bumped in 2.5D or 3D. I note that this is your first post since joining 18months ago so I suppose I’ll need to wait till sometime next year for some tips.
Whoa! my god, that’s one extremly detailed skin surface on that mesh head. Kickass work u done with it. I assume you don’t have a zscript for this hehe, would be great tho if u had one so we could see the way you get this scaringly realistic looking details on your model. I’d give u top grades for it 
/ Max
Sweet model! or should I say experiment? hahaha good stuff!
two questions…poly count?
and are you gonna texture this guy up in zbrush for kicks too?
It looks great Jim!
-R
Flawless, Jim. 50.
This is “FANTASTIC”.The realism you have achieved is simply remarkable.
wow it must be on top row. the details are amazing.
thanks for sharing!
I don’t think I knew to save a Zscript until I saw it on the forum last week. My Zscript would be primarily undos until I was able to get the effects I wanted. I could do it faster with less undos now.
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Careful attention to photographs. In the past I learned to copy skin detail from lifecasts. I tried to apply that to Zbrush. Sculpt an area. Compare to reference. If it doesn’t look like the reference why not? Try to make it more accurate. Should some areas be more stylized, less accurate? It’s up to you. Some people may not like it if your forms are very personal. Should a lip on a creature look like a human lip, an animal lip, or completely alien?
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Forms are the most important. From the large shapes to small details it’s all in the relationships of the forms. Interestingly in Zbrush, you can detail areas, and then continue to pull the large forms around without redetailing. More versatile than clay in this way. Does a standard brush edit stroke look like part of a head? Probably not. You have to figure out how to make a combination of strokes and smoothing look like say, skin with bone under it.
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I used primarily the Standard brush and Smooth brush. I never use the pinch or inflate. I try to build the forms up bit by bit. Pulling up an area next to a wrinkle rather than inflating. You don’t have to do it this way it’s just how I wanted to try it.
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I used Projection Master extensively for sculpting. I had to pick it up and drop it with many undos to see what I was doing but the pinpoint control is amazing. I used the layer brush a little to raise large areas just a small distance. I also used the blur brush to blend things. Stencil works great in there too. I used standard Zbrush alphas.
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Workflow on the wrinkles went like this…
Draw in creases. Fade off edges. Pull out form above and below wrinkle. Blend everything. Use move tool to adjust forms. sculpt with smooth brush on low intensity for subtle effects. Tighten creases in projection master. Blur everything you don’t like, redo.
Polycount is a million. I bumped it to 4 million at one point. I was able to import the level 5 head and rebuild the subdivisions, and got to level 6. It kept 99% of the detail but smoothed out the beard bumps a little. I could have redone them because amazingly I could still detail at 4 million polys with 1000 ram. Have to upgrade someday. But this is the level 5 head.
Here’s a production model from the Fight Club Game (It was done for Genuine Games and Vivendi ). It was Normal Mapped in the game but this is the Zbrush model. Obviously a lot less time was spent on this than the old man head. He’s got a crew cut on the painted model just in case you were wondering. 
your information is very useful for me¡ and your post is an strong stimulus to learn.
Congratulations
Andreseloy
Jim, exquisite detail in the model textures. You are VERY talented…
Thank you for sharing your technique. I’m sure to be using it on my work…
Jim, thanks so much for the break down. This will help me so much in my own efforts. Getting the basic shapes isn’t to hard for me, but getting the details and making them look right makes all the difference between an outstanding model like yours and my current developement. I can see that working from life casts would be enormously helpful as a learning tool. Wouldn’t it be cool if some how you could make some alphas for use with Projection Master right from digital photos of those life casts.
Your work is outstanding
Keep pushing those pixols
Absolutely stunning work. The work just keeps getting better and better here!
r