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
Pilou
I was wondering if you also created low poly versions for these characters for the Fight Club game?
Also were you able to create textures from the Z Brush models and use them for the low poly characters? If so, how?
I miss the wrinkles in the the front part of hiss neck,
but boy … this is just unbelievable awsome…
Superb work !
Thanks
Lucky_1
Damn! That is so good! wow. just… wow.
Awesome model. I’ll just get in line with everyone else and congratulate you.
BTW, on the Fight Club game, did you try to make any characters look like Brad Pitt or Edward Norton, or were you instructed to get close, but not TOO close? Just curious if you had to watch it on capturing any likenesses.
Anyhoo, keep up the great work!
Hey mc P,
Nice work pal ! This looks great ! I guess us old clay pushers still have a trick or two up our sleeves. Why don’t you paint him now? Great work show us more.
monstermaker
kinikuR6,
I think there’s information in the ZBrush Practical Guide ( or the Forum here) on creating Normal Maps. I think the Normal Maps are applied to the characters in real time as the game is played and the characters appear to have much more resolution than their real poly count.
Surly Bird,
Brad Pitt or Edward Norton did not sign away likeness rights for the game. The other actors did and we used reference from the movie to model their characters. The Jack and Tyler models you are asking about were modeled by Richard Diamant, who also helped me learn Zbrush.
ps: please check your email
jim
Dude!
I have two of your George Liquor babies sitting on my shelf at work!
Awesome work.
Thanks for blowing the curve in here
~Mike D.
OMG its Jim McPherson!
Love your sculpture work.
Boy o boy now you have Z…
This is exciting.