A Blender Sculpt I've been working on.


What do you guys think?

www.cgfallout.com
#blender
#blendercoders

Hey,
that’s a nice model, the wrinkles are really good.

I like the look of your sculpt, but the face is a bit ambiguous. The man’s brow is furrowed, which suggests anger, or possibly concentration, but his mouth is turned down in a look of distaste, or maybe sadness. These conflicting possibilities create a face that is hard to read. I’m not sure if he’s angry, sad, disgusted, or simply thinking very deeply. There are many ways to develop each of these ideas.

For example, if you want to bring out the anger, put more tension in the lips to purse them together, maybe bring the fleshy part of the chin up. This would make your man look like he’s about to explode in rage. Why stop there? You could open up the mouth, show those teeth. If you do that you could wrinkle up the nose, make him look like he’s actually snarling. But maybe that isn’t what you want. I like the look of suppressed tension. Those eyebrows are very expressive, but they don’t tell the whole story.

Moving on, you could try sadness. To do this you could raise the brow and lower the lips a bit more and relax the nose. Those muscles on the side of the nose (the levator labii), are pulling the lips up the opposite way and making him look disgusted at something. If you relax the nose, you’ll show a more sad, possibly thoughtful character, but you’d have to make some decisions about the eyebrows. If you lifted his brows but kept them wrinkled the way they are now, the tension would force his eyes to open more, creating a fearful look. Try it with a mirror, you’ll see what I’m talking about. But maybe that isn’t what you want either. If you want a more thoughtful and less surprised/fearful sadness, you could relax the brow while lifting it. His eyes wouldn’t bug out as much, but then he’d lose those wonderfully expressive wrinkles that you’ve worked so hard on. But I digress. The main conflict I see is between disgust and sadness.

If you want disgust, you’ll have to play up the mouth area. Add more tension to the lip elevators to pull up the lips, perhaps showing teeth. Move the fleshy part of his chin up a little, press it against the bottom of his lip. Squinch the eyes together a bit more. It’ll really bring out that expression.

One more thing: all of the stuff I’ve said were about bringing out very direct emotions. I see other possibilities, such as concentration. This is hard to pull off successfully, but your character has a look of quiet dignity I think you would do well to bring out. The only problem is people express concentration differently, so it’s hard to give a one-size-fits-all solution. If you’re going for something subtle like this, a slight frown would be a good starting point. You’d have to relax the nose a little, as that’s a big marker for disgust. I can’t really offer more than that. Your best bet would be to act out the expression you want to see in front of a mirror. I’ve done this, it really does work!

My final word of advice for you is think about your character. What is he looking at? What is he thinking about? What kind of person is he? What does he eat for breakfast (okay I’m kidding about this last one, but think about it anyway). You’re going to have to explore this guy’s inner life to stand any chance of communicating that to the viewer. Of course you could always go for something direct, there’s no harm in that. If you want to go in that direction, take a look at some sculptures by F. Xaver Messerschmidt. He was a master of extremes and I admire his work.

I hope this post helps in some small way. Thanks for reading! :slight_smile:

Thank you guys for the encouraging input. Now that you mention it, I think the look that I am going for is in fact concentration, and you are right, he does have a quite dignity to him. As for the role he will play I haven’t decided whether I will fo for the Wild West Bounty Hunter or the Drill Sergeant in the Marine Corp. Thanks again and happy Blendering

You really have an expression there. That is more than half of the battle. Sharpening up his features will help. Using different curves in the sculpt menu can recalls help. Are you using Dynamic Topology? If so the the Polish brush is your best friend when it comes to adding geometry.

Yeah I’m using DynamicTopo. Once I get it looking the way I want I’ll retopo and get him ready for animation.