Afghan Girl Likeness

Artwork Finished Projects
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Hello,
I worked on creating a likeness sculpt of Sharbat Gula, the subject of the famous photograph “Afghan Girl” taken by Steve McCurry in 1985. My main goal with this project was to see how accurately I could sculpt a person using a single photographic reference. For the sculpting process, I used ZBrush, while Blender was utilized for rendering, grooming, and texturing. I’ve used TexturingXYZ VFace models as a base for skin details.
I hope you like my work. Thank you for your time!

1920×2880 770 KB

1920×2880 1.11 MB

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Stunning work … just like the original. You did it.

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Beautiful work! I love the detail that went into this.

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Magnificent, the emotion is intact. It is a very precise work.

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Wow, thank you so much

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Thank you soo much

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Thank you for your appreciation

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You’re on the featured row! :+1:

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Wow, fantastic work!! I was just looking at this photo the other day. Would definitely like to see a side-by-side comparison.

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@nickewing here’s a comparison with the original, it’s a remarkable replication:

77425ca805f5e42b0cc072cc4fd6afe1d136c1f2_2_666x1000
77425ca805f5e42b0cc072cc4fd6afe1d136c1f2_2_666x1000666×1000 121 KB

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b9f508c92ecd8f538d639741967f54be-27712448862175×3200 340 KB

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The portrait itself was already instantly recognizable… (some look-a-likes aren’t) and of course human faces and especially eyes aren’t easy… but to see this comparison now…

:exploding_head:

…and @3dcharacter_artist : i liked the intial post now :+1: should have done previously :sweat_smile:

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Thank you so much

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Thank you :blush: :blush:

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Wow man thanks :grin:

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Thank you really :blush: :blush:

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really good work, but i think in your hunt for realism, (and it was a good hunt) u kinda did not realize the divine/etheral characteristics that made the picture so powerful. you replicated everything perfectly. everything but the feeling of the original especially in the eyes, had to say what exactly but i thought you might want some criticism on if you actually achieved the feeling you where going for instead of just praise on the technical side (which do defintelly deserve)

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I featured you on BlenderNation, have a great weekend!

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yeah, this is great and instantly recognizeable (and certainly on a whole other level from anything i could do!). i do think if i were to offer constructive critique it would be:

  • eyes are great in and of themselves, but the piercing nature of how they were captured in the original photograph is was super compelling, it would be interesting to see how closely that could be replicated
  • skin also has lots of great pore detail, although i feel like the shader could be dialed in with a bit more sss to make it a little less stone-y when viewed at a distance.
  • more of a pixel peeping observation: a little fuzz on both the skin and and fabric might help the harsh cg lines when viewed at full rez

but like… fantastic work. if anything it its so good it just had me wondering just how insanely close you could get!

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Looking great overall! But desperately need some SSS work on that skin :slight_smile:

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