My first bust. Need C&C and advice on what to do to improve...


I call this my first bust because it is, however it has been revisited and revised a few times as I’ve familiarized myself with Blender. I started on it a few years ago. I Created a basic shape and sculpted it to my liking. Then I retopo’d it and sculpted some more. I just got a new computer and decided to revisit it again. I’ve never asked for C&C on it. Where do I go from here? I feel it still needs another few levels of detail, but now it gets into wrinkles and pores which seem daunting. I need some advice on the materials. I never rendered it at this resolution until today and I realize the hair needs some work (it’s coming through the ears! How can I prevent that?). I also notice that the eyes should be moved forward a little to touch the eyelids. (I originally had a glass shader on a sphere that encased the eyeballs but it created too much noise, so today I changed that to a transparent/glossy mix and it revealed this gap.) Tell me what you think.

Great work!

Comments:

  1. Perhaps ear’s a bit off still. Easiest way is probably to model it separately using ear photo reference and then stitch it to the main mesh.
  2. Don’t forget eyebrows, lashes along with your hair work
  3. Skin shader

Et voila You’ll have a character to be proud of!

haha. That reminded me… I did start on eyebrows a while ago but ended up with a horribly freakish result. I then sculpted him into some sort of ogre. I’ll see if I can find it.

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Is your goal realism or something more stylized? His proportions are already stylized, so I would think that would be the way to go. If so, I would just add eyebrows, make the hair look better, and then call it done.

I actually did do the ears separately and stitched them in. After looking closely at them, I realized they’re a little thick and could use some work. I tried adding eyebrows a while ago and ended up with something freakish instead. So I went on a tangent and sculpted him into an ogre. This was the result.


But now i need to revisit eyebrows. should I weight paint them onto his face mesh or use separate planes, shrinkwrapped to the face with a particle system and the emitter set to not render. I have no idea how I’m going to do lashes.

Yea i was going for a more stylized toony look. But i would like there to be some more realistic texture on his face. I know how to paint on the mesh with the texture paint mode, but I do not yet know how to paint a texture from a photo of skin. Also, I don’t know if i want another level of detail on the sculpt but I haven’t figured out how to use custom alpha brushes effectively.

The ogre version looks cool too.


I changed his proportions a little to make his eyes smaller. I need to fix his eyelids a little and still have to add lashes/brows. I’ve increased the haircount and decreased the strand size. It needs some combing/restyling. It still is poking sthrough his ears. I also added a little displacement to his face so it wasn’t completely smooth. Am I making improvements or should I have stuck with a more toony look with exaggerated features? Please let me know what you think.

I think his proportions are still exaggerated, and a bit cartoony. It looks great though! I like his smaller eyes here. I also really like the displacement you put on his skin.