Base Mesh

Some helpful Brush shortcuts -

BCB - clay build up 

BMV - brush move

BST- standard brush

BPI - pinch brush

BDS - dam standard

Remake of the torso -

Before making my base model i decided to remake the torso i made last lesson as I really wasn't happy with how it looked. This time i brought up a reference to work from to make sure my muscle placements were more accurate and my proportions of the ribcage were more lifelike. I am certainly a lot happier with this, however I feel i definitely need to have another go at looking at how to sculpt accurate anatomy, especially refining muscle placements.

Building a base -

For this lesson we were creating a base character model, I first started out by creating a rough shape using the Zsphere tool that we used last week. I had a little trouble at first getting it to work, my model had somehow duplicated itself, but I was told that I should save my sculpt as a tool and bring it back into a new document, this solved the issue. Then I moved onto sculpting the pectorals and the deltoids, In 2D art this is usually where i start once I have my scaffold down, I don't know why I do this but it seems to help me the most. Once I was happy with the overall shape, I masked off that area to start working on the lower torso and legs, I had a lot of trouble with the legs especially in the lower calf area to the ankle. I think I should have smoothed this area more and tried to better define the muscles in the lower leg to make it look less wobbly. Then I moved onto the arms, I only managed to do the upper and lower arms but not the hands, both because I ran out of time, and also due to the fact I was admittedly very intimidated to try modelling them. I think the arms look somewhat ok, I was trying to pay close attention to my reference to see how the muscles are placed but I find it very hard to translate that to a 3D shape. Lastly I modelled the head and face, of which I realised far too late that the head is disproportionately large to the body. The face looks a little strange but I dont think its too bad, the problem areas are the nose and ears, and I probably could go in with a bit more detail to really define her features. I am going to research something for next session to see if there is a way to shrink down the head so she looks more in proportion as I would rather not have to start from scratch. I also tried to model her feet, the outcome of which is mostly why I did not try to model her hands. For the first time of me modelling something like this, I think this could have gone a lot worse than it did, however this exercise has taught me I should probably work on my understanding of muscular anatomy as if I can build up my muscle memory and understanding of how the muscles lie on the body, I would probably be able to transfer that to a 3D plane much better. On top of this I think I should try to use a wider variety of the Z brush tools and brushes to help me get a more refined and readable model.

Z Sphere base

Progress so far