portrait of angela merkel

when i began sculpting this portrait in dynatopo, i wanted do her as a claysculpture…but along the way i decided to go the extra miles and turn the sculpt into a realistic portrait of angela merkel. this was quite a bit harder, as adding color seemed to fade some likeness i had in the sculpt. so, a lot of the work sits in the color texture map for the face, together with its normal, roughness and sss map, that i painted in zbrush completely by hand. also doing the hair was quite challenging, as i had to meet her distinguished hair style. but blender is well equippped for such task, even though i would wish a better visiblity of the hairs in combing mode… she is posed within blender with an armature, i really love that now, where i have learned how to do it :slight_smile:
so, here she is, i hope you like my attempt. (and, i hope the likeness is well enough that you can recognise her)


Cannot say that its wonderful, sorry no offense Frau Merkel, but its very realistic. Congrats

Hmm nice image I really do like it but it’s not quite like your previous works.

The lighting is somewhat dull, try something like this:


(taken from Andrew Price’s Architecture Academy)

What’s bothering me the most is some materials look unrealistic, ex. the microphone and flag.

Eyes are a little to stiff I would say, not really sure what the problem is (more glossiness maybe?)
Oh and btw try adding more sss in your skin shader

Hope this helps you a bit :slight_smile:

There is something in her face that I can see it’s cg. Maybe it’s the face expression. Anyway, much better than I would do.

She is definatley recognisable, but a bit too thin in the face?

her mouth is too small, and the wrinkles that go from the side of her mouth to her chin should be more pronounced. The shaping of her chin is a little off too, it is not as curved.

The shaping of the nose is not quite right either, the bridge is too flat and also the tip has more volume than that.

Her eyes are too small also in my opinion. And also possibly too far apart? i could be wrong about that.

Nice work with the hair, it looks great :slight_smile:

I’m sure you have a lot of references already but take a look at this one to see what i mean -

Attachments


i cant beleave the feedback you are betting… i think it looks really good, maybe cause i dont know who the person is so i dont have anyone to relate to.

anyway if i had to point out anything i think it would be the skincollor. looks like she is lacking blood, and pigments.

really good render though!

The model is good, i am just pointing out that it is not a complete likeness to the subject at hand. Check the reference i posted above, thats who it is

instantly recognizable as the woman herself. There is something a little lacking in the lighting, maybe something else, I can’t put my finger on it, but overall it’s quite good.

Well, as I don’t like Merkel, I must say the portrait is very good!!! sheepHD has a point about light and environment… And her jacket could be a bit better, but just the fact that this ‘Merkel’ looks like something out of ‘The Walking Dead’ made me laugh!!! :smiley:
Good work Doris!:wink:

thank you all for your comments, some of which quite a bit irritated me to be honest. i address a few of these in no particular order … angela merkel is germanys chancellor since almost 10 years, and according to forbes the number 5 of the most powerful people in the world, and the number 1 on the most powerful women. if i would say i do not know who barack obama is you would certainly very surprised … i agree on the shape of nose critique, i missed something here, i checked the other points with my main reference, and they are correct. the reference image shown shows her much younger, with more fat on her. and as i show her talking, her mouth is posed and thus it appears to be less wide than on the shown image which has the mouth in relaxed pose. speak a letter o and watch how the corners of the mouth go inside, for example. may be the choice of showing her speaking was a bad one, but i thought it is a good characteristic to her … the suggested lightning from andrew price is well suited for such architectual, but i wanted portrait her giving a speech, and in these locations you do not have fancy natural ligthning, but have articifial lightning, which often makes the speaker look pale and dull and is not very flattering … yes, material of flag is lacking, i agree on that. it was not important to me, so i did not spend too much time on it. i see i should have done the extra work :wink:

I did not realise that the posing of your character’s face was in mid-speech. With that said the facial expression now makes more sense to me. I hope it wasn’t my comments that irritated you. It was not my intention if that is the case. I was trying to give some detailed critiques. I myself could not yet produce a character model of such quality, but i still like to give my input and hope it can help.

The model is great, And i have since looked at more recent images of the subject and you are right, she is thinner nowadays and looks quite a bit different to the image i posted. (sorry, i did not know that the reference i posted was an older image)

Also, i looked at you’re “fun with zbrush and blender” blog on wordpress. There are some fantastic pieces of work on there. I particularly like the crocodile :slight_smile:

Very faithful work, Doris! I actually like this idea of portraying her while speaking, it feels more natural given the setting and the lighting. Certainly, “stylized” lighting can make a model look more interesting, but would change the feeling of the image. Did you add a vignette to the image after rendering, or is it simply the lighting that was in the scene?

The details of the face look great, although I think the image has to be viewed in full view to appreciate them. Often, a sculpted model may be let down by the hair system in the final render, but your hair here looks wonderful!

I wonder, have you tried any harder lights with this sculpt? I found this image- http://im.ft-static.com/content/images/254d9f3e-8ce3-11e3-8b82-00144feab7de.jpg

But as you stated, this image as well may be from years ago when her face was different, and such hard lighting may be unflattering for your model.

In any case, a very detailed and excellent resemblance. Even the details in the cloth are well executed.

Doris I like the shader on the flag, I don’t think looks flat, the apect I really considere my favorite in this image is the Hair and the accesory (the buttons), definelly looks pretty awesome!

Doris I have curiosity if you apply the film filter on this image, with the color management option, you can upload a render with that filter apply? :slight_smile:

It’s a beautiful sculpt, I could not comment on that. Perhaps it just needs better framing to minimize the flag and balance the weight of the character? I would crop sides and top.

jamieb, it was the comments together in their tenor, not a single one alone. all is fine, i appreciate constructive critique, but the comments together came accross harsh. maybe my simple language skills did miss something… yes, she had lost weight, and as far as i can judge she is proud of it, so i wanted get this in my sculpt. thanks you.

james, yes i added a vignette in photoshop, since the plain render needed more focus in my feeling. i am really happy that i could manage to get her hair about right, it is difficult to create a very specific hairstyle, but blender is really well suited for that, one one has understood how all these many settings work. i had not tried harder lightning, yes i can see from the image that this would have been interesting. would have given a different statement than i wanted make. good idea for next time. thanks.

jose, yes the hair! do you remember how you teached me that so patiently! see, i learned it, thank you a lot again for that. as for the filmfilter. no i did not in blender, but i added one in photoshop, and then tuned down so it is only a little visible. i feel more familiar with doing these post work in photoshop.thank you.

3pointedit, thank you. yes the cropping idea is good, now that you suggest it, i can see that she looks a little “lost” witihn the many empty space…

Great work as usual. clothes, lighting, etc. seem to have gotten less atention than the incredibly detailed face. Which is a shame for the total scene.
With your skills I’m sure you can fix this pretty fast. Maybe you were a bit quick to call it finished.
As far as the subject is concerned: You did a kind of reverse caricature where you’ve beautified her instead of the harsh reality.
From your own comment on the work I asume you are somewhat of a Merkel fan. Be that as it may, in no way conceivable is this peasant woman ‘distinguished’. From her grandma clothes to her manlike brute behavior.
There is a bit of truth in some clichés: Germans are good at making cars, grundlichkeit and being on time. Having style is definitely not one of their qualities.

You forgot to do the hands! Anyway, it is very resembling model. She does look sad or tired however - I usually see her bored or sceptical :wink:


Hi you again. Not intended to be mean or something when talking about that face expression. It really makes sense since she is in mid-speech. She appears somewhat sad to me. The render overall is very well done and a lot of work was put into it. Looking forward to see more of your renders in the future.

i hope can do the same thing …