[ENDED] BC2-1803 – March 2018 Class Homepage – Creating Stylized Characters with Blender

[Kent Trammell]

Ahh yes!! We must see Patrick and Ian rendered together 🙏

[Kent Trammell]

Whew – I have some catching up to do in this thread! Real quick, here’s a WIP of my John Dunne sculpt:

Today I worked on the head and polished the legs and feet – of course, my affinity for feet… A helpful note perhaps: Don’t be afraid to separate your sculpt into multiple pieces. I do this in the Wrangler course as well, but as a reminder, it can make the concept sculpting phase much easier to work with. I separated my feet, head and mask so far.

Also about the head, I decided to sculpt with mirror on (correcting the separated head’s orientations) to get the human facial features correct. Now that I’ve done that I’ll sculpt the separated mask object according to the art.

[malhomsi]

nice Sensei , u r going fast ! i m stil working on my base mesh !and checking proportions and anatomy !

[Henrique Celeste]

I can already see some John Dunne in there :3.

I’ll only have time to start my sculpture tomorrow, but until now i’ve been developing the story. I’m kind of struggling to make a short and yet appealing story that captures the most of the features in the concept art! I really want to make my very best to get at leat a B+ :3

[DARRIN ALDER]

I’m still confused as to how you will bring it all back together to retopologize, etc.  to get the character in an A (Or T) Pose.  How do you plan to do that?

[Jere Haapaharju]

Starting to take form. It’s pretty cool to see how the pose has evolved when the starting point was (of course) so weird and awkward. Can’t wait to see this finished and ps. the shoes look pretty neat

[Kent Trammell]

Sorry for the late reply @purpleant – I’ve got some catching up to do in this thread. I like your character bust! It reads quite true to the art and the hair is well done; really helps to sell the likeness. Only thing I wish was there was some color to represent the eyes and soe geo for the teeth/tongue. Those seem important to me for establishing full likeness.

Is this part of your week 2 homework; the conceptual sculpt?

[Kent Trammell]

While I agree that this doesn’t feel overly exaggerated, I totally see Jean Luc Picard in there. The squinty/slanted eyes are great, the forehead slope into the nose feels recognizable, the expression, the hair… Nice job getting a likeness without exaggerating much. I agree with Grady’s note about the jaw line missing the corner(s) below the ears.

In achieving a good likeness but without much exaggeration, you’ve earned a solid B+ in my book 👍

[Kent Trammell]

This thread is getting lonnnnng. It’s [painfully] obvious that we need a custom system for classes to be built into the site ASAP. Perhaps a thread per week.

Thanks for dealing with the ‘beta-ness’ of the current system. Suggestions are very welcome for what the official system could be.

And thanks for the assist with the timely answers @stonewing  @oboshape  @malhomsi 🙇🏻‍♂️

[Kent Trammell]

Wow, this is an incredible result for a first-time likeness/caricature sculpt! You’ve done a great job exaggerating key features, like the eyes, the chin, and the frown. Recognizable without a doubt.

Well done! It’s an easy A in my book.

[Kent Trammell]

Sheesh, you’re a busy man. Sorry to hear about 60-hr work weeks…no worries about late assignments 👌

[Kent Trammell]

Solid feedback from Matt. Even for a WIP sculpt, I think you’re very much headed in the right direction. The crooked smile, generally round, potato-like head, big eyes – they’re working well imo. I honestly think if you just continue to flesh out all the pieces (glasses, hair, ear details) it’ll be a solid caricature.

[Kent Trammell]

A blacksmith and a well-known dancer – now that’s a father to inspire us all! Nice work with your character’s story @silentheart00. It’s evident to me that you really stepped into her world; got into here head. I hope this exercise has deepened Kilyn for you.

My one critique is not having a concept image to accompany the story!

[Kent Trammell]

@darrinalder My suspicion is that you’re not the only one wondering about the posed concept sculpt -> retopo & neutralize workflow. I’ll take some time to explain that better during next week’s stream.

Basically, this approach is what I learned working at Reel FX as a character artist. The crux is that to get approval in 3D from the art director/director, it’s best to sculpt a super-authentic iteration of the 2D concept first. Then the art director/director can most clearly understand the 3D version, rather than interpreting a neutral 3D version. Once this initial ‘concept sculpt’ is approved, the technical phase of retopo and neutralizing (which the director/art director doesn’t care about) can be executed. Oh and the concept sculpt by itself is typically much faster than sculpting neutral + retopo + posing.

My plan with my John Dunn concept sculpt is, once finished, I will focus on neutralizing the least extreme side of his body into an A pose (this will be his left side) Then I will retopo that neutralized side with a mirror modifier. Then possibly, for a final showcase render, I may quickly rig and pose the retopo’d model back into the original art pose.

[Kent Trammell]

@swikni I’m glad the pose is feeling better! Yeah, it was definitely awkward starting out. I’ve learned that just being patient and trusting the workflow, in time the pose (and everything else) usually turns out ok.

Being diligent to address every part of the character, adjusting each part according to the art (also filling in the gaps by posing myself) and eventually I’ll take a step back and think “yesss, it’s coming together!”

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