EDW - Face squishing

This...isn't where I want it to be yet.  I've been trying to move things around to make it look better, but I think I made it worse.  lol  We'll see how it goes the next session.  The mouth isn't quite right and the right eye looks a little deformed.  :\  Oh well.

EDW - Rendering tests

So earlier today I was playing with the render settings of ZBrush, seeing what it could do.  I think I'm missing something, but I'm going to look for some tutorials, see what can happen, but for now this is what I was getting.  A couple different runs with different settings and materials are below.

I also moved around the features to make him a little more asymmetrical, and now I'm going to do a little more than that.

EDW - hair texture test

Made notes to what I was trying to do.  I ordered a ZBrush book that has some texture walkthroughs in it regarding how to do skin and hair, so hopefully it'll get here this week and I can get to doing that.  There is still some general shaping that needs to be done, but I'm a little lost of what else to do.  I want to also add in a collar so he's wearing a jacket, which doesn't look hard from the PDF I was looking at that was from the book I ordered.  We'll see how that goes when it gets here.

EDW - McKellen Hair adjustment

I worked a little bit on restructuring the face as well as fixing the direction of the hair.  Figure on the top left shows where I made changes, while the one to its right is the changed model.

EDW - New Direction

Sat down with David and talked about some strategies to try to get it to look more like Ian McKellen, mostly in regards to how the skin hangs with the folds as well as how I modeled the hair.  So, now I have a new direction on things to work on as well as a list of things to adjust.

EDW - Next stage of hair

Here's a update on the hair that I've been working on with some reference photos.  I still have some work to do on the face, but I wanted to take a break looking at it.  After this I'm going to go through and do more detailed striations for the hair.

EDW - Hair Blocking

Started blocking out the hair on the sides.  Didn't get to the top of the head yet, but I'll get there.

Oh, and earlier I also tried to make his skin a little more saggy looking and have a little more...jowls under the chin.  I'll have to do more in that area later.

EDW - Skin texts

This was once again jumping ahead, but I decided to play around with using the default brushes to see if I could get something that was a skin-like texture, and how much I had to sculpt with the little tiny wrinkles, and how much I could just use a brush with.  I'll start searching for more advanced brushes on top of this.

EDW - Portrait Progress

So here's the newest update on the portrait of McKellen so far.  Worked more on defining the bone structure and added a suggestion of the hair.  Adjusted the size of the skull and did some work in the lip and nose area.  Added some muscle suggestion in the neck.  Threw some creases on the brow, though I think they're too exaggerated still.  He still looks a little too skeletal but I think that because of the dip behind his cheek bone extends too high up his cheek - should end just below it maybe.

EDW - Progress on Ian!

Mostly worked on the eyes and a little bit on the mouth.  Wrinkles are fun.  :)

EDW - Bust Adjusted

So I adjusted the proportions of the bust so that it better matched McKellen.

Time to add hair and start sculpting!

EDW - Project Switch

 So...I spent a bunch of time working on the hair for the bust, realizing that I had to attach it before I could start sculpting because I didn't want poor Angie to be bald.  I decided since I had to start over what I sculpted anyway, that I could change the project if I wanted.  (Not to mention I somehow lost the file with the hair when transferring files from my computer onto my flash drive).  I looked for a while for a reference of an older woman so that I could do some wrinkles (so much more interesting).  I had a hard time finding references, though I had thought about perhaps doing Maggie Smith.

But in my image-searching I somehow happened upon Jim Broadbent (who played Harold Zidler in Moulin Rouge! and Horace Slughorn in Moulin Rouge) and so I started to consider doing a male bust.

Also thought about doing a president with a suggestion from Kate, such as Howard Taft or Ronald Reagan, but we talked about other old famous actors, and I actually really liked the idea of either Dumbledore or Gandalf.  So, I decided to go with Ian McKellan.  The next question was which Ian McKellan to model.

Gandalf Ian.

Dashing Ian.

Or perhaps Dapper Ian.

But when it comes down to it, I think I'm going to go with Magneto Ian.  Mostly because there is no facial hair, his hair is a good position to sculpt, and he does lots of wrinkly frowns and eyebrow-raising.

So next I'm going to readjust the proportions of my bust and get a-sculpting.

EDIT:

Found a model someone else did:

http://www.subdivisionmodeling.com/forums/showthread.php?t=3048

EDW - ZBrush WIP

Brought the model from Maya into ZBrush.  I wanted to start small and figure out a workflow, so I started with sculpting the mouth region.  I still need to adjust the depth of the mouth and lips, as well shape the philtrum a little more accurately, but it's a pretty decent start I think.  Her lips aren't quite round enough I don't think, and although the chin is a little pointy, I feel like the shape is generally correct.  The nose is completely wrong, but I'll get there....

Sculpting is fun.  :)
But here is a picture that is probably a little bit closer to what I'm going to eventually be sculpting.  I think I want to sculpt her smiling instead of being all smoldering because I want to model more creases.

It occurred to me that I completely forgot to model the base for the hair.  I'm going to start looking for styles, do a base mesh, and model that separately I think.  Then combine the two after they're done.  Or, since I'm not that far, I might start sculpting over.  Oh well.

EDW - Progress on two projects

Here are some shots of the strawberry so far.  I need to add the seeds and the leaves now, but I've finished the body of the strawberry for the most part.  There are a few things I need to fix, but it was oddly therapeutic.

Here is the bust I'm ready to import into ZBrush to start sculpting.  Finished the UVs today, so all should be good.  Hopefully.  We'll see.

EDW - Bust Base "complete"

Today I "finished" the base bust.  I don't know if I did too much detail, not enough detail, detail in the wrong places, or what, but I have what I probably will be able to bring into ZBrush to make into my Angelina.  Yes, she doesn't look like Angelina yet.  I was only trying to get the general proportions - I'll do the minor stuff in ZBrush.  I hope.

I'm hoping I didn't just waste hours making this base mesh when I should have started with a sphere in ZBrush.  I've seen it done both ways, so we'll see...

EDW - Project 2 start

Well ZBrush was acting weird on my computer so instead of finishing my strawberry like I planned today, I decided to get a headstart on my next project, a human bust.

I decided that I would create the base mesh in Maya so I was working on that.  Below is what I modeled thus far, one of which with a wireframe to give a general idea of how heavy the geometry is.  And, yes, it's modeled so the top and bottom parts of the face will match up geometry-wise, I just ran out of time today to put them together.  Will do tomorrow and post again.

I'm going to finish the base mesh by the end of the weekend and get this thing into ZBrush to start doing the details.  And although you can't tell at the moment, I think I decided to try going for an Angelina Jolie sort of look.  The mouth doesn't look like it because I didn't decide to model her until I was looking for references for eyes.  I mean, her lips do scare me a little bit, but she does have beautiful eyes.

That's where I am with that.

EDW - Sculpture sketch

I created a sketch of how the overall sculpture would look ideally.  I want to have 4 to 5 strawberries arranged in a splash of water that comes out of a surface of water at the bottom (just shown in profile at the top and bottom image).  This is a 180 degree rotation.

I'm going to create the base mesh in Maya then transfer it over to ZBrush to do the details (I think).  I'm thinking it might be more economical to just do the entire water part in Maya, but I want to at least try ZBrush first.  I'm going to go this route so I can learn about importing base meshes into ZBrush, which I'm pretty sure is common practice.

I'll next post what I get out of the base mesh in Maya.



EDIT:  Well, Maya just crashed so I lost that file.  Heh.  So I'll do it again and let you know how it looks again!

EDW - Work in Progress

I forgot to post my progress from Tuesday, so here it is!

And here is the update for how far I got today.  This is the front and the back, and I can't decide if I should smooth the whole thing or not.  I don't like how the smooth looks, but I feel like it should be a lot more smooth than how it is now - it's a little too textured.

I think I'm going to take a break from strawberries once I finish all the dimples and start on the water.  A few people told me about a few ways to do the little seeds, so I'm not too worried about getting that done.

Until next time.  :)

EDW - Back up time

Okay, so I didn't think to post all my reference stuff before my last post, so we're going to go backwards a little bit.
Here are some references for the tasty strawberries (though I'm sure you could have easily googled that):

As for the actual concept of the entire sculpture, here are some shots to give you a good idea of the final product. Several strawberries will be suspended in streams of water I'm going to sculpt in a week or two.

When I get started on the next phase of this class working on a bust figure, I'll post about that project.  For now, you all get strawberries.  :)

Experimental Digital Workshop - WIP

First post!  I worked for a while trying to get the right proportion of the little dips on the surface.  I'm going to start again and basically make the holes about the same, but I'm going to increase the distance between them.  Then I think it'll be good.

The actual process of figuring out ZBrush is going pretty well - starting to get the hang of the interface, which is good.  Hopefully by the end of the weekend I'll have one strawberry done.