Thank you. I love your works BTW, very colorful and elegant.
Oh my god, nerdy girls and glasses. You just boosted my imagination and design direction for my special project Juliet. Also, I have a weakness for short haired girls. My Juliet is mostly taking inspiration from Max Caulfield from Life is Strange, at least from her personality and hairstyle, which is the primary hairstyle for Juliet. But as she’ll be having at least two other hairstyles I can explore more of her overall look.
Getting back to your Flora, those glasses just made her to look even more adorable. Love it. Thank you for the inspiration, Anton. Little things can make a difference.
You are welcome and thank you too.
But honestly I am ready to give up with Flora and entire project. I cannot recall how many times I did changes but always dislike the end result. Maybe it is too early for me to sculpt original stuff so I should concentrate more on practicing and simple copying.
I don’t know. Instead of totally giving up with the project, maybe you could take a longer break from it, while working on other smaller doable side projects. I think it’s not worth giving up, because of the amount of time and effort you’ve already put into it. I believe you can revive new life into that project later on with a fresh mindset, since it has so much potential in it. That’s how I’m feeling about the future of this.
This is exactly what I am doing the last year - switching to side projects to come back later with fresh eyes and ideas.
Speaking about potential - not really sure. While I believe that artist shouldn’t be very dependent on public opinion and first of all should create artworks he personally likes, but the fact that during two years my story didn’t intrigued anyone (except 2-3 close friends) makes me thinking that I’m failing as an artist. Which is synonymous to a lack of potential. Honestly I’m continuing posting here just because I still want to work in industry so I must promote my skills somehow.
Meh, doesn’t really matter. Thanks for your support, I appreciate it.
Polishing her body. Hands should be smaller.
Plus some progress on feet - my least favorite part in entire body. Hate this fingers.
PS Looks kinda like Lilith from The Binding of Isaac.
I think her body is super delicious to look at. Only the palmar side of the fingers’ fat pads are just a tad too bulgy considering her overall lean body. Not much, but a little bit.
Oh man, I just noticed how nicely you added the coracoid process of the scapula poking out between the anterior deltoid and the clavicle. I’ve tried to put that on my girls, but I’ve never got it right (my Juliet is definitely going to have them, and tons of other anatomical features I’ve never done properly on my previous girls before). Also, I’ve had hard time adding the round poking shape of the head of humerus from underneath the deltoid as well. But you balanced all of the three of them (the anterior deltoid, the head of the humerus and the coracoid process of scapula), so cool!
Speaking of genitals, the details you’ve got there is amazing, but the overall body needs skin similar micro details to be in the same level. Same goes with nipples. Waiting for that… (;
I guess you meant that you hate her toes (not fingers), am I right?
P.S I also sent you a PM regarding to feet and toes.
Keep up the great work, you’re nearly there!!
Thank you, it is nice to hear!
The hand is the remnant from the previous stage when Flora was planned as a bit plump girl losing weight under extreme conditions. Later I also wanted to make her hands and fingers very childish though it is very hard to do, mainly because I don’t have a proper reference and sculpt from a vague idea in my mind. But I will work more on them for sure.
Thanks for noticing the poking coracoid process. Most people see a regular shoulders with random bump on it, some of them even suggesting me “to smooth artifacts”. I start thinking that only another artist can fully appreciate the amount of love creator puts into his creation. Yes, this part is very tricky, I always had problems (and still have) when sculpting the roundness of humerus head. It became easier when I switched from regular head studies to busts with shoulders and chest.
From this angle the details of genitals aren’t that visible. I intentionally picked non-provocative angle. But this part (genitals) is very important to understand Flora’s mentality and psychological complexes. Also, while Nastya’s main sins are Pride, Wrath and Gluttony - this can be read from face expression and hips. Flora’s sins are Lust, Sloth and Envy and the first one is symbolized with her overdeveloped inner labias… it is hard to explain everything with a couple of sentences and without comparing this two different worlds from where Nastya and Flora are coming from.
Yeah later I will add microdetails to the whole body. But that would be the final stage. My PC is very old and slow so I was developing special workflow saving memory as much as possible. I decided to go with decimating my models (instead of using displacements in Blender), then splitting my sculpt to pieces and make pores (current 14 millions of polygons is not enough), and then bake small details to normal map. Previously I tried using procedural pores and hair bumps. Like here or here (tan lines is a postprocess) but in most areas they look too artificial, especially when zooming in.
Yep I meant her toes. In my native language there is no differentiation between fingers and toes so I often making mistakes when speaking English.
Your feet are great, don’t be so humble. I never was into the foot-fetish so for me all feet are kinda the same. Meaning that only criteria I use is how natural they look like without thinking about prettiness.
Some progress on Flora. Judging by her age she must be in the last grade of school or the first one in university. Don’t know that much about educational system and schools in XXIV century, but I bet that schoolgirls still wear the uniform.
I know the blouse looks funny since such a tight clothing will compress the breast as well. But right now cannot deform her boobs due to technical reasons. At the same time, I start liking this look. Kinda reminds me old fashion photos where girls had this funny pointy bra-cups. Might even leave it as is, this project wasn’t planned as fully realistic.
Hands are making me mad. I spent four working days redoing them numerous times from scratch and in different poses. Finished with the same position as was previously, lol. And now they look rather small. Always hard to make arms and hands proper size.
Her short bio is coming soon… if someone is interested, of course. Then some adjustments here and there and I’m ready to jump into Blender and make renders.
Some people asked me about the references I’m using for female characters and if I can share my collection. Well, the collection is made from many thousands of images and weights lots of gigabytes and it would be painful to upload. However very often I create big reference sheets for particular body types. So I thought I can share some of them with community.
- Proportions. Bunch of images from different authors and in different styles. Horizontal lines represent approximate height in head lengths. Vertical lines - relation head length to waist width and the distance between nipples. Two lines below each figure - proportions of waist to hips.
- Abdomens. Grouped by musculature development body types, amount of fat below the navel and camera angle.
- Hips and bums. Nothing special, just a round booty and hips with broad bone structure. Still in process.
- Breasts. From medium to large. Frontal views above, three-quarters below, side views at the bottom. Plus some posed as a bonus to fill the space. Most of them are checked to be natural and with minimum of Photoshop. The shots of breasts of the same girls are grouped together.
I hope you find them useful. I also have similar compilations with stylized characters, planning to make compilations with clothing.
Fantastic reference. Thanks Vir! Great work too. Super clean.
Thanks! And glad you like them! I hope you will find a good use for them.
Up! Gonna fix her Serratus anterior, polish the breast, add small details and call the high poly done.
PS And knees… totally forgot about them.
Nastya’s face resculpt. Old proportions were crappy and overall head was too sketchy.
Still not happy 
I’m definitely liking where the progress of Flora’s body is heading towards. I love her cute small hands. <3 Btw, there’s actually a rule of thumb to measure the proportions of hands. This is a quote from one polycount member critisizing someone’s work “A good way to see general hand proportion is to compare it to the face. Just place your own hand flat on your face, bottom of palm to the chin and you should see that tip of your fingers cross well over the eyebrows.” I’m not sure is it the most accurate thing or anything, but I guess it’s worth a shot to test it out though.
Ah, Nastya, I really like her new more realistic look. Especially her eyes being closer together and more emphasized infraorbital furrows are helping that. The inner corners of eyes (medial canthal ligaments) could be fading away instead of making that sharp round turn, because after all, they’re ligaments/tendons attaching to the bony surface of the eye socket.
Also ears could be slightly more defined. The helix of the ear is too narrow, and there’s actually quite sharp stop on the furrow between the helix and anti-helix once they meet the lobe of the ear. The lower branch of the anti-helix feels too long, or maybe the triangular fossa between the branches of the anti-helix is too big. The overall earlobe seems a bit elongated as well. Also, the tragus could be pushed out slighty more and be rounder, making the intertragical notch pop out more between the tragus and antitragus. Lots of anatomical terms, bit it’s easier to explain this way. 
Oh, and your PM, I’ll get back to it soon. Been a bit sick lately. I’m already recovering and feeling better though. (;
Yeah, sure I know this method. Remember I was talking about 1.5-1.2-0.8 proportions for the arm, forearm and hand respectively? This measurements are in head lengths so it is quite natural to compare this 0.8 of the hand to the face. Still a lot confusion here. First of all - where is exact beginning of the wrist and where it should be measured? Is it right at the end of styloid process of the Ulna or slightly distally close to the widening of thenar/hypothenar eminences? Meaning that from palmar and dorsal sides the length of the hand can appear differently. Then coming back to this method - the face is obviously not a flat plane so when you put your hand the fingers become a bit flexed due to the nose - this introduces a lot of inaccuracy. Plus hands differ so much in sizes. When I put my hand it easily reaches the hair line cause of the long fingers. Add numerous confusing points I already mentioned via PM - and that’s why sculpting them is total nightmare to me. I also heard advice that if your are not sure about hand size - make it a tad bigger, so it will appear slightly stylized but not obviously mistaken. Well not in my case since I intentionally planed her hands childish and small. But I’m happy you liked them. Though I’m still not satisfied.
Since I did the hair for Nastya, I concentrated on different parts and clothing and totally forgot that her cranium and proportions were so off. The hair can be really distracting sometimes. Yesterday I rechecked her and was like: “Wow that’s a lot of work to do”. Basically her face was untouched for about two years or so (not counting microdetail pass I did just for fun). I am still not happy with her look but cannot figure out what is wrong… just not reaching my standards and my overall vision of her based on story I’m writing. She is considered the real beauty though people say that Flora is more attractive so I really should work harder to improve Nastya’s appearance.
Mmm dunno, I pretty much always sculpt sharp and defined inner eye corner. Kinda like it - since I’m not striving for full realism, this is a case when personal preference goes over real life. But I will try it the way you described and see how it looks like.
Yeah nothing to add about the ear - it is really sloppy :lol:. Again mainly because of the hair. Will fix it for sure.
Thanks for your feedback and get well soon!
Just quickly adding here. When it comes to proportions, I’m always just eyeballing everything instead of checking right proportions with complex measurement values. For me, it’s too much to handle, and even though I’ve actually tried using some measurements, I’ve usually undone changes, because something always looks either too long, too short or elongated. Maybe sometimes having a 7.5 heads or 8 heads proportions chart in the background with ZBrush’s “See-through”, and try to match it approximately. So, most of the time I’m trusting my perception and observation.
For example, the latest version of Zarah’s body I PM’d you back then, I haven’t measured anything. Just eyeballing.
My eyesight sometimes can be so deceiving. There are moments when I do practices and trying to match very complex pattern (for example the ice-cream wrapping with lots of folds) and when I overlay the photo on top of the sculpt it matches almost perfectly. And then there are moments when I cannot figure out very simple proportions like phalanx’s lengths. This makes me feel so dumb. So yeah, overall I don’t like using strict numbers to measure something, just use it as a sanity check to make sure I am somewhere in the ballpark. Though as I wrote already this checks can make everything worse if you rely on them too much.
PS Don’t like using overlays method like See-through - takes all the challenge and feels almost like a cheating. Plus it can make a bad service, especially for beginners. It is better to train your eyesight.
PPS Something happened to forum - not sending me notifications about replies.
Quick test. Damn that’s a fifth hairstyle for her and I still feel it doesn’t fit her face. Probably would be wiser to judge her look after finishing the face…
As people noticed already on another forum - the hair could have more volume. Probably gonna try the sixth version. I want to show the process of hair growth from short and boyish to more feminine and elegant as the story evolves.
Looks like I’m stuck again.
