Back to Clay Scuplting

With what I had learned on my research and with my Mudbox sculpt, I returned to my clay maquette and attempted another sculpt from scratch to try and make this one more like my subject. I used air drying clay again before I started my final one in super-sculpey. I faced the same material issues as before and attempted to follow the procedures as described by Hildre (2005) regarding the basics before the details.

“There is absolutely no point in commencing with a detail such as the mouth, for instance, if you have not already prepared its background; in other words if the general supporting structure is still not right” (2005:29).

So I did my best to create a symmetrical basic face and then once this was done I worked into the details. However although this model was closer in similarity to my subject, I ended up with flaws that detracted from the realism of the head in general such as an overly prominent brow and eyes with were too far sunk into the head.

Below is the finished sculpt...

I had the same problems with the hair as the previous sculpt but this would not be an issue with Super-Sculpey as I could leave the sculpt unfired if necessary.

Wallowing in the Mud(box)

Still trying to make my model look more realistic. I’ve been practicing drawing topology lines on photos of my subject and others to get me better used to the contours of the face…

 

I've now began to make and refine my final model, the head took time to model and shape so that it mirrored my subject but after a few attempts I had a basic subject head that I could further refine over time. The features were rough but they corresponded close enough to my subject that I could work with them. Below is my final model in its early stages...

I then started working more closely on the main features such as the eyes, at first I tried using the tools such as the 'Foamy' and 'Wax' tool but found that I could not get a realistic enough sphere in the socket. So I read that it was possible to create sphere meshes to act as the eyeballs themselves.

                                                 

So I sculpted the eyelids and surrounding area as best I could and then hollowed out the eye sockets and created the spheres. There was a lot of adjusting to get the eyes in the right place but eventually they were done to the point that they looked like the subject. Obviously as these are separate objects they will be painted or imprinted separately later on.

The next thing I did was to change the lighting presets until I got one that gave the model a more realistic feel.  I also began sharpening up the ears and the other features, even though the hair (which would be modeled last) would cover most of the ears I still wanted them to look as realistic as possible so I asked people on several forums for their best ear topology images to get a feel for them and also looked at my subjects ears to see if they differed at all.

                               

I came across a few problems as I started fine tuning the features and these were issues such as the fact that my subjects head photo, although it lined up perfectly with the rules was not the same from the profile to the front view. This was mainly due to the issues of shifting to an orthographic view and the changes (although subtle) in expression and angle.

Once I had sculpted all the details of the face such as the nadilnus, 'laugh-lines' etc and the model looked accurate I began adding the hair. The hair was perhaps the most difficult part of the scuplt to get to look like the subject, this was because whereas the skin was a flat surface which could be mimicked quite easily, the hair on the other hand is constituted of about 100,000 hairs on average. There was not a sufficiently effective tool to make large masses of hair look realistically defined either. I read various ways of trying to do this but none of them applied to Mudbox. I tried using different 'alphas' to define the hair but none of them looked particularly effective. My only option was to create the hair in large portions and then sculpt it as best I could. The hair on my model looked reasonably good and perhaps once it was colored later would look better.

Proportion

I thought our lecture with Phillip Ball gave me a greater insight into musculature and proportion. Practising drawing using Ball's analytical system has helped me to place proportion more realistically and give depth into my drawings.

I began a number of life drawings, each time looking at them more closely regarding the underlying skeleton and its proportions. Making sure muscles lined up with the skeletal structure and so on. The lesson was also helpful with insight into giving depth to my drawings. The scientific style of Ball’s drawings and the level of accuracy and detail is something that I will be trying to incorporate into my own life drawings in future.
I also attended more life drawing classes with Sarah Beare. I was given some very useful exercises to work on my proportion and perspective. The exercises entailed me doing a quick succession of charcoal line drawings of the subject in a variety of dynamic poses.



The quick lines I was doing helped me to learn the proportion of the body rather than concentrate on the tonal properties. I was then instructed to quickly block out a silhouette of the subject just using chalk pastels and briefly add in dark areas with charcoal.



Again this exercise taught me to concentrate solely on the proportion of the lines.
Hopefully this will help me to improve my drawings and promote better accuracy in my sculpture work

Mudbox

Though I had ‘toyed’ briefly with Mudbox and to a smaller extent Zbrush, our tutorial on Thursday was the first time I had properly say down and worked with Mudbox. I found the programme difficult as first, mainly due to issues with symmetry for instance it was all too easy when using the ‘Grab’ tool to grab a part of the head along the outline which would cause errors like the one below…



However it was easy to correct and I soon learned that errors were mainly due to now ‘Grabbing’ at the outermost outline point of the head. The other issue I faced was unavoidable and this was the differences between the side and front view photographs. As much as they are lined up as well as possible, because of the differences in lighting expression etc, there were always inconsistencies between the two view when I came to model them.

I much preferred Mudbox over Autodesk’s other programme Maya, this is mainly due to the software’s intuitiveness and similarity to real world sculpting. The tools took a while to fully get to grips with and required a lot of ‘fine-tuning’ before I was able to use them properly. I found that every tool I used, I greatly decreased the strength. Leaving the strength high led to errors such as this one…



I created some test heads, to practice using the tools and to get me used to drawing the contours of the head before I started on my actual model of my subject.

As I previously mentioned it was initially difficult to perceive the 2D display and see my model as existing in a 3D space and to remind myself that I was sculpting rather than drawing or painting so I read more into the subject of 3D space and read the relevant parts of Tom Appizi (2009) ‘Inspired 3D modelling and texture mapping’ which explains the concept of the Cartesian Coordinate System which is the mathematical system the computer uses to create an object in 3D space. This is explained further in the below diagram...



Apizzi quickly summarizes and defines the system of 3D space and the use of Locals, Objects and Gimbals which otherwise would have been quite daunting.

More research…

Topology research begins, started with online searching as much as I could find on the subject, which surprisingly wasn’t that much. There were more examples than I could count of good and bad topology but very little descriptions of what topology actually was. Found a couple of books at the library which may help.

Peter M. Plentec, (2004) ‘Virtual Humans’

Jason Osipa, (2007) ‘Stop Staring’

Frederic I. Parke, Keith Waters, (2008) ‘Computer facial animation’

The books were very comprehensive but didn’t have much information for the 3D modelling beginner, apart from Parke and Waters book which did have a large amount of information on the foundations of modelling but not enough dedicated to topology so I took my search for information back online and found a few helpful forums.

CG Talk – http://forums.cgsociety.org/

SubdivisionModelling.com - http://www.subdivisionmodeling.com/forums/

Polycount -- http://boards.polycount.net/

I posted threads in these forums asking for advice and although I had to wait quite a while, I was awarded with a lot of very useful information. The large majority of the information that was made available to me, although very detailed was not entry level so I had to do a lot of reading up on the subject to understand the use and application of Nurbs, tri’s, etc before the research and information started to make sense.

However all of the information I learned while researching facial topology was of great use in my clay and Mudbox head modelling as topology taught me to be able to read the ‘flow’ of the human face with greater accuracy. Learning where and how I would place ‘Edge Loops’ taught me the contours of the face including defining the finder details such as the nasolabial fold…

and the mound at the corner of the mouth…

I was able to apply what I had learned in my research and transfer it to my sculpting process.

Clay modelling begins…

Just began researching modelling the head, as advised by Lanteri (1986) I began by looking at the busts by Donatello ('The Lawyer') and the head of Lucius Verus, there were great examples and although defined by the style of the era, the proportions, spatial awareness and detail are perfect.

Bought some air drying clay and began my sculpture, I quickly realize why many sculptors work down from a large block or clay. It’s much easier to sculpt down using the negative spaces to create the head rather than starting from nothing and working up adding the features etc as you go along. Found some very helpful video tutorials on clay head modelling...

My first attempt went ok, whereas I found it easy enough to make the clay head look like a human head I found it very difficult to make it mirror my subject. Even though the proportions and features of the face were fine and even looked ok individually, as a whole they didn’t work.

I left this first attempt and started work on attempt version two:

This sculpture had a better likeness of my subject but was still nowhere near close enough. The addition of the hair helped with the resemblance but upon drying became very brittle and several pieces broke off over the following days.

I ordered some ‘Super Sculpey’ online after reading several reviews stating this was one of the best polymer clays for maquettes.

Research, research, research

Started drawing the face to get reacquainted with it...

Studied the proportions...

• The eyes are halfway between the top of the head and the chin.

• The bottom of the nose is halfway between the eyes and the chin.

• The mouth is halfway between the nose and the chin.

• The top of the ears line up above the eyes, on the eyebrows.

• The bottom of the ears line up with the bottom of the nose.

Researched the skull and levels of the human head; muscle groups that are evident through skin such as Masseter, Obicularis occuli etc. Laid them over my drawing using Photoshop to see where they lie and if they’re correct...

FGA3...

Received the brief and headed to both libraries to check out as much info as I could on the human head. There seems to be quite a lot of anatomical reference books showing and describing the musculature and skull but actual modelling, particularly 3D are proving elusive.

Grabbed as many books as I could...

Making Faces – Keith Roberts – A great book detailing the many ways art has depicted the human face, from traditional aboriginal sculptures to digital and 3D constructions

Facial Expressions – Mark Simon – Mainly a reference book visually depicting the myriad of human facial expressions such as anger, fear, etc.

Sculpture: Principles and Practice -- Louis Slobodkin – Not a bad book, introducing the basics of sculpture but not much detailed information on defining features and characteristics.

Modelling the head in clay – Bruno Lucchesi – Much better book focussing on the finer points and techniques for head modelling.

Couple more books reserved for me like Stop Staring by Jason Osipia and Modelling the human figure by Edouard Lanteri.