Polybook HUMAN – Elubie

[Andrea Weikert]

First of all, great fun following the (hopefully first in a series) HUMAN course  so far and learning a lot.

Here’s my current progress:

0. I wasn’t 100% sure whether my computer would handle the project, so I loaded the high-poly models from the Resources and did a few terrible scultpting tests on them and luckily I was happy with the perfomance and had no memory issues.

1. First run through the videos: Chapter 1 – completed, Chapter 2 – 2/3rds through

2. Anatomy: AnatomicLex: Bones Labels A on 2nd try only missed one bone 😉

3. Practice: Completed Chapter 1: Planes of the Head II (Yes I know, supposed to watch through once leisurely, but I couldn’t resist opening Blender. My plan is still to completely watch the course before I reach the end of chapter 1 with my first model)

4. Number of created Portraits so far: 0

Latestg progress picture:

[Andrea Weikert]

I experimented a bit with generating a base mesh. Exploiting the fact that the Remesh operator in sculpt mode can handle several overlapping meshes, I used some boolean oprations to create the sub-meshes along with a bit of poly-editing (to match the roundness of the forehead with the plane for the front of the face).

I still think that the sculpting  method @theluthier uses is more artistic and intuitive and gave me crisper results. Admittedly, I was just quickly throwing stuff together and didn’t care about any mesh quality since this is used as a base for further sculpting anyway.

Then I got a bit carried away and tried to intuitively sculpt a head with the information that I retained from watching the videos so far.

To be honest, I couldn’t stop  once I had started putting in the first details. It’s far from perfect or even finished, but also much closer to head that at least starts to feel a bit realistic. I’ll count this as a bit of fun sculpting practice, because I want to go on with my previous sculpt and finish that.

[Kent Trammell]

I LOVE this thread @elubie! You’re going to get so much out of this course.

I also LOVE that you’re experimenting with your base mesh! Improvisation and experimentation suggests you truly understand the core of what’s going on in the workflow. I encourage you to always explore a new method or tweak what I demonstrate to best fit your workflow.

You’re making fantastic progress. My only note is that the face in your last image feels a bit flat. Try and give it a bit of a curvature (from a bottom/top angle) by pulling the cheeks, corners of the mouth, outside corners of the eyes, and outside corners of the brows back toward the ears a bit.

I can’t wait to watch this thread progress into a rendered portrait 🤩🍿

[Andrea Weikert]

Small progress update:

Has been quite a busy week for me with respect to work, so not that much progress.

1. Finished watching Chapter 2

2. Practice: Completed Chapter 1: Planes of the Head III

[Andrea Weikert]

Small progress update from me today:

1. First run through the videos: Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 finished, Chapter 3 halfway through.

2. Anatomy: Reviewed Bones Label A and started memorizing Labels B (can’t remember them all yet, but will get there – eventually)

3. Practice: Completed Chapter 1: Planes of the Head IV

4. Number of created portraits so far: 0

So far having lots of fun even though it’s been a bit of a struggle for me to get the planes of the neck correct. I had to do a lot of smoothing and re-working, and still some wobbliness remains. So this hardsurface sculpting is something I definitely need to practice more. 

It’s been helpful to simplify and exagerate the shapes though, I now actually started seeing the planes in the face of everyone I am looking at.

Watching the videos on the skin texture had me jaw-dropping, very nice workflow and already looking great without even final tweaking.

[Will Sayce]

Its looking really good. I too have started looking at people IRL and noticing the planes and lines on their faces. Gives me a little smile when I catch myself doing it. 🙂

[Andrea Weikert]

Finally had some time again to share what I did in the meantime:

1. First run through the videos: Finished Chapter 3 and started on Chapter 4: Hair.
2. Anatomy: Ugh, got a bit lazy here 😉
3. Practice: 
   1. Completed the first round of details of the face (Eyes, Ears, Nose, Mouth, Neck,..)
   2.  Made 3 variations with different noses, eyes, mouths and ears – to be honest, I was more playing around than trying to match anything specific. I plan on doing specific practice on eyes, nose and mouth at least soon and there I will focus on ‘likeness’
4.  Number of created portrait so far: 0

Overall I realized that I need a *lot* of more practice until I can approach the speed and accuracy of the sculpt in the videos. But still I feel happy about my result even though it definitely has lots of room for improvement. It surely is a challenge and will take me at least a year of study to get through the course at this speed, but that’s good since there is so much in this course.

Thanks @theluthier for the great course and challenge! 

And here the variations:

[Kent Trammell]

Sorry I’m late to your thread @elubie – Your head sculpt progress is going very well! Forms and anatomy are taking shape 👍

One note I’d like to offer is a common one for head sculpting: The front of the face feels unnaturally square / flat. The identifiers of this for me are A) an eye-setting that feels crossed-eyed and B) wide gap between ear and outside eye/brow corner.

Here’s an image trying to explain:

If the head shape is simplified, it’s like a skewed rectangular prism. The right annotation is meant to show that pulling the corners of the prism backward should round out the face better, very much like a lattice modifier would do.

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