Thanks!
I do appreciate the critiques I get, but there is always room for simple positivity.
Im digging the detail. You should develop it more. Do some Concept sketches and then go at it.
How you liking the Gnomon DVDs? Arent they GREAT!?
edit: Oh yeah the transpose tool gave me so much trouble. What i found out is that you just place the markers in the same place the bone would be and it bends it perfectly. I make sure to look at the marker in every angle to make sure it is anatomically correct.
Try it again, you will see a major difference.
Thanks.
I’ve taken a little break because I got in the 3 day Warhammer Online beta, but not that’s over, so it’s time to get back to work.
The Gnomon DVDs are indeed pretty cool. The robot sketching is a bit beyond my skills, it assumes you are already good at rapidly producing a drawing with correct perspective, which I am not. The light and color DVD was great, I’ve found myself considering the ideas it communicates in just about everything I do. The female modeling DVD is something I haven’t looked into much. I got discouraged because it required a basic model, which I didn’t have, but now I do, so I should give it another look.
Thanks for the transpose tips. I’ll give it another go, but I have to say, my results up to this point have been nothing sort of disastrous.
Yo twitch this is my new thread. check it out when you get the chance. been a while since you critiqued the hell out of some of my work lol.
http://www.zbrushcentral.com/zbc/showthread.php?t=60698&page=3
Will do.
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Base mesh is the same as last time. Material is bronzed skin by Sathe. I dunno, I wasn’t liking this one, but towards the end I started to like it a little more. Critique if you like, I’ll make note of the comments for the next sculpt, but I’m not really feeling this one, so I doubt I’ll work on it any longer.
Edit: Also, I noticed I got another rating and my average actually dropped. Has my work really gotten worse since I started this thread? Really?
Hello Twitch,
it’s my first post whatsoever but i’m reading this forum for a long time. And i have to say you made much of improvements consindering your first posts.
At this modell espacially, i think you schould recheck a little the “average” Anatomy.
The torso seems a little bit to smal for the big muscular arms und the model itself looks really wierd if you stretch his legs so much apart.
If you have problems sculpting the legs when they are close together, you could try to either mask the other one and then let smart reysm do the rest (its riscy bot worth a try) or you could try to sculp them like this and then move them back to the “normal” standing position.
Or, of course, you could add the legs serperately.
but maybe, if the model doesn’t feel right, it can be the pose, that freeks you out.
Greetings,
Zerg
(English is not my native tongue, so i’m sorry for every mistake i make)
Well, I guess I’d recommend drawing and studying some human shapes… so that they look human… I have to say that there are so many things wrong in your anatomy that it’s hard to say anything specific actually 
Learn and make the basics first, details later. Kinda feels like you tired making the basics with details…
And honestly, your sculpts looked better in the beginning of the thread.
I actually have to say that the heads did look better then… and then suddenly you got a step worse… somewhere at the dino-thing.
Well, good luck.
Very well then. You don’t really give me much to work with here, but thanks for your time anyway.
I suppose the question of whether my work has worsened or improved is a personal call, though I’d say that the increased level of complexity in doing full bodies should be considered when making that judgment. I could continue to sculpt heads, but then I would just get better at sculpting heads, which are really only a small part of the anatomical equation.
I think if you really tried you could give me a little more to work with than you did. The “look at anatomy more” critique is ultimately a little insulting, though you don’t seem to mind being a bit insulting. I mean, who would try to sculpt a human without using anatomy references? The difference is in the finesse of execution and the ability to solidly define the necessary forms. That’s where your critiques come in, or at least where they should, but clearly you thought that your posting what you did served some purpose. I’ll simply have to give you the benefit of the doubt that purpose wasn’t malicious.
What it be twitch!
I think we are both having the same problem hahaha. What is really turning around my work is not moving anywhere past the 1st or 2nd sub d level until i can completely recognize all the shapes and can pretty much see all the details with my minds eye before going up another sub d level.
Also what really helped me was making basemeshes of a hand and sculpting hands for a while, then a forearm and hand and so forth and so on. Of course i am no artisan yet, but i will be.
Through trial and error i have found that it doesnt matter what type of brush or any amount of detail i put into the model if the very basic of forms isnt complete.
That Female Sculpting vid from Gnomon goes into great detail about that.
Keep it up and keeps it real!!!
Thanks for the comments, D.
What I did was I moved the verts of the base mesh around in the 2nd and 3rd subD levels (and that’s pretty rough on this model, considering the base mesh is around 450 Total Points). Then I sculpted in the basic forms at the 4th and 5th levels. Finally, I went to the 8th level and build them up a bit more with the claytubes brush. Then I smoothed it all out and went and did the whole process again. Then I did it one more time.
So, while the whole sculpting process didn’t take much time, I did go through all the levels of sculpting. I think I probably just got a bad start and never really recovered from that. Hopefully my practicing will lead to better results in the future.
I’ll also go through that sculpting DVD, but I just didn’t have the time last night.
Once again, thanks for the comments, you never let me down when it comes to being helpful.
Edit: I forgot to address the hands. Yeah, hands and feet I consider a whole separate modeling challenge, so I didn’t really touch them in this sculpt. I had to somewhat on the hands, because they just look so bad in the base mesh. I’ll have to work on them separately and hope my skills improve on dealing with them as part of the body.
Glad to be of help Big Twitch!
Norman Rockwell said, “If you can get the head and hands right, the viewer will forgive you for the rest.”
Which makes sense, a whole lot of sense actually since those are the two most intricate and critical spots that the viewer subconsiously looks at first.
Thats why no matter how good a body looks if the head and hands are wrong or off the whole sculpt looks off. Ive seen a few examples of that here and from some of my art friends.
You could do an experiment and really focus on the hands and head on your last sculpt and see how it launches it to another level.
I appreciate your comments as well Twitch!!
P.S. Thanks for the mock up in photoshop for my sculpt. I clearly see what you mean now.
No problem.
Today was the day I set aside for traditional sculpting, so the Zbrush work was fairly limited, but here it is anyway:
[attach=107876]shrekkindofwo6.jpg[/attach]
I also tried to make a hand, and it was quite tricky:
As you can see, it’s pretty basic. I tried to sculpt it, but it pretty much sucked. How the hell do you sculpt fingernails? Mine looked like creepy fingernail-shaped parasites.
Edit: I’ve also noticed that I got a couple more votes and have past the 2 star threshold. Not sure why, but I don’t make a habit of questioning positive changes too heavily.
Attachments
Just keep going man. It isnt going to be done over night. Dont give up!!
Thanks, D.
I had another go at making a head from a polysphere. I was liking it until I looked at it too much, now I don’t, but maybe eventually I will again.
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](javascript:zb_insimg(‘104931’,‘Triclops.jpg’,1,0))
I will return to that hand and try to make it look right. Possibly later today.
Hello Twitch, I’ve red all the posts on this thread with interest.
I’m going to be as honest and constructive as possible with my contribution. Based upon your first couple of posts, I would have thought your work was a lost cause - I’m NOT trying to be rude, there just seemed to be very little observation involved on your part.
There has been a definite improvement though, and there is clear evidence that you are looking much more closely at reference as you sculpt. In terms of crative spark, your most recent creatures are not too bad, and I think the metallic human face from around a week ago is excellent.
I feel your pain when it comes to sculpting hands - I consider myself relatively competent at this ZBrush gig and have been complimented on the hands I model. The truth is, I couldn’t do them by sculpting - I actually had to box model them first in good detail and exact proportion, the only sculptural additions are veins, wrinkles and pores.
Hands are a very precise, almost mechanical form, that’s why I think box modeling them is more appropriate. There are some good tutorials out there if you search so I recommend you do. You mentioned you can use Max, so set up image plains and follow them as closely as possible, making sure the topology is nice and clean.
My final thought is that you have given yourself a HUGE challenge by jumping headfirst into ZBrush the way you have, and I don’t envy you. The only reason I slipped into using the software relatively easily is because I spent my entire life honing my observational abilities through thousands of hours of observational drawings and clay sculptures.
Drawing and sculpting is not about the physical process - it’s about really seeing - both broad forms and the minute details (although form is more important). If you can replicate these with a simple pen and paper then you can do it in ZBrush with a little practise.
I recommend a book called “Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain” by Betty Edwards. Many artists will testify that this is the single most important book they have ever read. It has transformed people’s abilities by allowing them to harness the correct part of their brain when they observe. Some people who are labelled as “naturally gifted” have simply been fortunate enough to use the correct part of their brain from the very beginning. Others have proven that this skill can actually be learned, and in a surprisingly short space of time. Please read this book, you absolutely won’t regret it.
Keep up the work, you are clearly passionate about improving your skills, and that is the most important trait an artist can have.
Pete
Thank you for your very in-depth post.
I don’t just sculpt in Zbrush, that’s just what I show here because that’s the nature of this forum. I actually alternate every day between Zbrush, 3ds Max, and painting in Photoshop. Hopefully, as my ability to recognize and render form in painting increases, so will my ability to sculpt it, and vice versa.
I did box model the hand initially, before I started sculpting on it, but my box modeling skills are still rather rudimentary, so even simple modeling is a stuggle. I certainly wouldn’t want to simple start sculpting it without a solid base mesh, that’s for sure. Like, I said, the detail I sculpted on there turned out really badly, but since I’ve deleted all that higher detail, I think my box model has benefited from all the geometry changes that occured in the higher levels. I may have to go back and sculpt it again and then delete all the higher levels repeatedly until I have a quality base, but if there is anything I have learned thus far, it’s that learning is a meticulous, and often arduous, process.
I began reading right side of the brain some time ago, and I had some difficulty following it. Mostly, because I found it difficult to perceive upside-down figures as anything but figures. I may have another go at it though. I think I’d prefer to sketch in Photoshop rather than paper, but that shouldn’t be too big of a problem I don’t think. I just can’t work on a drawn image without having it quickly degenerate into a smudgey mess.
Well, once again, thank you for the time you took in replying to my thread, and I will consider your comments.
hahaha thats one cool head!!! Reminds me of the Its Alive baby with a 3rd eye.
Keep it up and keep going!!!
Thanks.
I think I see the resemblance, especially with the teeth.
I really need to get subtool master, trying to get all those teeth right without it was tough. Though it didn’t hurt that the nature of the sculpt didn’t require they be perfect.