Reply To: Tips for sculpting?

[Tomas Plasil]

I recently started learning to sculpt human anatomy…i didnt get to faces yet, Im learning the upper body right now. But what Kaj said about anatomy is very true, even though youre sculpting a fantasy character it still needs to kinda “work” in terms of anatomy. For that purpose I would recommend you start practicing sculpting regular humans. Most fantasy characters are based on human anatomy anyway. And human anatomy is pretty interesting if you find a good source to learn it from. For example, I found a course on gameartinstitute.com by Eric Wilson called Artistic Anatomy which is pretty awesome, and I could see immediate improvement in my sculpts. But if you dont want to pay for that, Im sure there are some great resources somewhere else. Just be sure to check who is teaching the course, I also found a course on Udemy and quickly found out the instructor is not as knowledgeable as they presented themselves. I dont know if there is a course here on CGCookie which teaches anatomy specifically, but im sure some character creating courses talk about the subject. Books are also a great source, but for me its better to just have someone explain it to me, and once I know something I look for more info in the books, since they can get a bit overwhelming if you are just starting.

So if I was to give you a specific example of whats wrong with your sculpt, the area under the chin and jaw goes way too far to the back. The transition between the jaw and neck has a lot more meat there so the curve should be way more smooth. If that makes sense. Also the top of the head is probably a bit too square. And there is also a muscle going from behind the ear to the from of the clavicle which is not in your sculpt. Those are just a few examples, a person more knowledgeable about head anatomy than me would tell you more 🙂

Another thing thats really important is that your sculpt is way too highpoly right now. You will geta much better result if you start with extremely low poly and progressively increase the resolution.Try to get as much definition as you can with each level of resolution. Good thing to do is to look at your model from far away and see if the forms are readable. So to give an example, start with really really low resolution and sculpt the outline of the head, eye sockets (without eyes), cheeckbone, jaw and neck. Dont worry about detail, just try to get the volumes right. Then zoom out pretty far and see if you can recognize the features. This is just a thing that works for me, the main thing really is to get as much definition at low poly and then progressively increase the detail.

Also, as you make sure that you work on each part of the sculpt equally. So its not like here, that the mouth is just a line, while the eyes already have eyelids. And again, increase the resolution in small increments. It will make it easier to smooth the hard edges, since smooth brush works based on polygon density.You will have a hard time smoothing the top of the head and get rid of the hard edges if you try to do it now. If you jump to a high resolution too fast, your sculpt will turn out lumpy, as you can see on the ears for example. (if you want it to be lumpy, is much better to add the lumps at a later stage exactly where you want them)
 

Lastly, dont worry about brushes. The main thing is get the volume and structure right. You can do a whole sculpt with just clay strips. If you just use that, smooth and crease, youll be fine. If you just have a general idea what each brush does, you will probably realize when you need it when you get to that situation. Just play around with them and soon youll figure out which brushes work for you. You dont need use the same brushes as someone else to get the same result, the brushes are really not that important.

And the really last thing, I see that your chin is asymmetrical. I would recommend to just leave the symmetry on for now. Making the face asymmetrical is a great idea, but leave it for later stages.

I didnt expect to write such an essay, but I hope it helps 🙂 I guess its also good for me to recap some the things I picked up so far 😀