Modelling Plan
Now that I had decided to sculpt the man, I worked the best way for me to approach modelling a realistic character, which I decided would be to work in layers. Meaning I would build up the characters features, from the skull, to the muscles and the skin, and then work on refining. This process would hopefully help me keep accurate to real facial structures, without having any one specific example, so I could still be flexible in what I wanted to sculpt. So, I began with a general sculpt of a skull, which I've shown below.
Modelling Process
Eyes
After sculpting the skull I built up the brow bone and eye sockets. I did this slowly, following medial books to maintain accuracy. I found that with my initial sculpt I was making the eyes too small and too far apart, as I was using the bridge of the nose as guide for their spacing, rather than approximating where the nostrils should be. Below is before and after I adjusted the features.
Nose
Next, I added the nose. I found that rather than building up the nose on the skull and risk distorting the mesh, that appending a sphere to the model and sculpting a nose from that I was able to refine and shape the nose more confidently. Then when I was happy with the nose, I had I simply dynameshed the two tools together.
Ears
When I sculpted the ears, I followed a similar approach to the nose. However, rather that sculpting them from one of the set shapes, I carved and ear out of a polyplane, masked and deleted the area I didn’t need, and extruded out the area left to make the ear a 3D appendage. After that I duplicated the ear and adjusted it to fit the character. After I was happy with how they looked I once again dynameshed the tools together.
Lips
At this point I also completed the mouth to make sure that everything o the characters face looked correct in relation to each other. Following muscle structures, I built up the cheekbones, cheeks, jaw muscle and mouth area itself, before carving into the area with the dam stamp brush to form the lips cupids bow and lower line separating the chin from the lower lip.
Chest
Adding the neck, chest and shoulders was once again achieved through appending a cylinder and sphere to the rest of the sculpt, sculpting than into the general shape needed, and dynameshing them all together. Following the muscle structure for these areas was much easier as the features are less intricate and creating the shapes can be achieved in border strokes. Overall, I would say that this was the easiest part of the assignment.
Facial Hair
Now I moved onto hair and facial hair. I completed this with relative ease as well. I masked the areas of the brow bone ad upper lip area I wanted to cover, extruded them and sculpted until I was happy with the result.
I then moved onto the beard and did so following the same procedure as before. This is where studying the anatomy of the body was most beneficial to me. Despite the are under the chin being covered by the beard, knowing where the flesh around the jaw area hangs as well as connects to the neck allowed me to get a better grasp of how the beard should look.
Hair
Now for the characters hair. I went through a few different attempts before getting a grasp on the character. At one point I was going to re-evaluate and give him shorter hair. I then decided to plan out how I could break up the different sections of hair. I decided to start at the base of the skull and work my way up. I then shaped the hair into several different appendages. Once done I dynameshed them altogether and sculpted them until I was satisfied.
I decided to leave the character without clothes in the end. As without arms or a lower body, I found it would look quite jarring to have the clothes just cut off at such in unnatural way. Therefore, all that was left to do was tidy up a few details and then the model was complete.
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