More Sculptin'

 In the game Sea Of Thieves friendly wildlife consists of pigs and chickens. Because of this, I thought why not make another farm animal to fit in with them, a cow.

This exercise was one of the more interesting of my latest stylised studies, as trying to capture the style of Sea Of Thieves on something I hadn't done before was a bit of a challenge.

The form of the cow is both simple and soft, yet appears solid where it needs to be (the bone structure and horns) allowing for the cow to hold a sort of cartoonish form yet still be well recognisable as the animal it is.

For this sculpt, I simply used reference from a few images of real cows, along with a picture of the pig from Sea Of Thieves, so that I could get the nose and the eyes to fit in with the style of the game.

Undead Study

 Using my third anatomy study as a base, I decided to try and attempt my favourite cryptid, a zombie. It was great fun trying to make the character I had previously made slowly decay into a shambling horror, and led me to find some great new artists to follow whilst I was browsing for reference and guidance, and even coming across the artwork for a VR game I play often, which helped me along the way.

Once again another quick sculpt, especially since I had a base mesh already for use, turning my anatomy study into the undead took me roughly three and a half hours, during which I looked into the decaying of skin around eyes and mouth, and also the loss of noses.

This was a really fun little project to do, and I hope to eventually do more creepy looking sculpts once my skills are more refined. This is also actually the first sculpt I have done with an open mouth and teeth, and I'm decently happy with the outcome, following the structure of the mouth from the base mesh, the teeth could be placed a little better, as the gaps between them are quite large, which isn't too much of an issue with a zombie, but if this were another anatomy study, I would most likely need to study the structure, placement, and types of teeth and where they all go.

The ear was difficult and posed quite hard to destroy without looking like I just mushed it up inside itself, however I am pleased with the side profile of the zombie. I do wish to continue with this study, perhaps starting a new sculpt for the next one.

Monkey Monday

 Today I decided to go back and try something in the style of Sea Of Thieves again, my in game pet monkey, Frank.

It was again a quick sculpt, taking roughly 2 hours in total, with a further few minutes to add a touch of poly paint. I feel as though this sculpt was decently successful as it seems to fit in well with the style of Sea Of Thieves. However, I do feel as though the mane of the monkey could have been better, as to me it feels too chunky. Due to this being a quick one day study, I will not be going back to change anything on this sculpt and will instead be starting a new one afterwards.

This in-game image I captured was what I used for reference, I feel as though if I spent longer on it I could have got a lot closer to the reference, however I used this sculpt to practice how fast I could create something stylised.

Sunday Sculptin'

 Recently I've been playing The Binding Of Isaac a lot, and thought it'd be fun to try and sculpt one of the bosses from it, Monstro.

I tried to be as quick, yet accurate as possible with this sculpt which only took me two hours in total, from sculpt to finished polypaint. This was fun little challenge as the only reference I used from the game was a flat 2D image from the boss' sprite sheet. It was a really fun exercise as it felt easy to bring the 2D character into 3D.  I hope to make a few more characters and bosses from the game as the style is nice and simplistic, which is fun to practice with. 

I used a mixture of two reference images for the short sculpt, one being a front on fan art version and one being a slightly side on game sprite.

I tried to capture the angry eyes from this sprite plus the exaggerated cartoonish forehead vein.

Third Anatomy Study

 For this anatomy study, initially I couldn't get anything close to what I wanted to achieve, and ended up stuck on the first subdivision with something I felt was going to be difficult to save.

The top of the skull was solid enough to work, along with the jaw line. Features around there however were way too sunken in (the temple and the cheeks), and the brow bone was very odd looking.

The side profile was not far off being good, but still needed a lot of work to bring some anatomically correct scaling and features. 

After this, I started to flesh out my character basing the initial looks after a character I am familiar with to try and bring a bit more of the anatomically correct features out.  The character I chose was someone who already had those gaunt looks to their face, John Marston from Red Dead Redemption. This took a while to achieve however, as shown in this screenshot that the resemblance has still not come through, yet some more anatomy has been filled out.

Here, in the next subdivision up the features are getting closer to a real proportions yet are still quite sharp. Bringing the nose closer inwards in the middle allowed me to portray the idea of the cartilage underneath giving it a more realistic appearance. I also fleshed the temples out and brought the cheek bones in a small amount, gradually making the character appear more realistic. 

John Marston from the Red Dead Redemption series, used as rough initial reference for the character's head.

I then added the next subdivison level so that I could focus on the more intricate details of a face, such as the eyes and the ears which need more polys to work with in order to capture the essence of what they are supposed to look like. 

The next step was to stray away from the character and turn it into it's own face, by deviating from the reference and adding changes to the structure of the nose, brow, cheekbones and jawline. this was the outcome I had reached where I drew a blank on what the next necessary step to take was and so contacted James, the tutor that has been teaching me anatomy. He was pleased with the outcome and my progress, with little criticism for the sculpt, and told me that the next step to take was to break symmetry and add various fleshy details around the face to break up what he called 'the obvious outline' of the human form. Meaning to add volumes in areas such as the gaunt cheeks to break up the symmetry in a way that gives the character an older appearance (as a middle ages to elder character is a better study to look at in terms of how the muscles and fat under the skin form).

For this I decided I would be doing multiple studies on the affects of what these added volumes can produce, and wanted to produce both a stylised realism study (for which James suggested to look into the Dishonored series and how they portray their characters), and a realistic study. 

I tried to exaggerate the features I had created anatomically accurate with these added volumes, and adding in creases and folds where I had scrunched up facial features in order to maintain the realism side of the stylised realism approach. While looking into Dishonored style sculpts, I noticed that very often the characters had large scars around their face that were often made by the folds of skin being added, this is something I tried to replicate on my own study on the chin and somewhat on the forehead. I also brought the cheekbones of this sculpt out and down slightly, and brought the jawline in and down to give the character an older appearance through sagging skin. On the more obvious folds such as the top of the nose and along the brow bone, I dug into the shapes slightly with the Damstandard brush to achieve a deeper effect.

I also chose to position the character's eyes a little to the right, as when I added the volumes to the face, the expression presented itself as an angry glare in that direction, and so I did my best to follow how the flow went along.

I also attempted to reveal some of the teeth in an iteration of the sculpt, but was not as satisfied with the outcome as I was for the original version as I felt it looked a bit off. However, I do feel as though this stylised realism study has been successful and I have a lot of fun playing around with it.

The realism approach I felt did not go as well as the stylised, as I feel as though I made the face a little too puffy with too many volumes added around the cheek and nose area, however I did like how the chin on this attempt turned out. I feel as though I will need another go or two at the realism side if I want to nail it properly, as there are things I could definitely improve on.