Oh yeah, he looks much more like himself (:heh:) now.
And I agree, avoidance that goes on for too long needs to be pushed through; there’s no getting around it, because it’ll just settle in as “normal” otherwise. I hate deadlines with a passion and won’t force them on myself, but they do provide a solid kick in the butt, and I need that kick – i replace deadlines with small daily tasks, no matter whether I feel like it. Once I get started and over the initial hump, things can fall into a groove. They don’t always, but because I force the daily exercise, they have a daily chance of doing so. Which is better than waiting for inspiration to strike – I’ve waited for months for that to happen, and that’s just not good enough.
I thought over @piranha4D’s words above, reviewed my average sketches and reconsidered: the face proportions might be “off” but at least now I can honestly say that it’s my choice. So I’ve raised the eyes a bit. I don’t know, it makes me more… comfortable? Guess, for better or worse, this must be what they call “finding your style”
I had to fight against Krita A LOT these days. Drawing in it just doesn’t feel right for some reason. It clearly recognizes my tablet, reacts to pressure, but only the most straight-forward things come out as expected (like heads above) I can’t quite figure out where the problem lies, if there even is one.
But I have a solution: Blender GP works just fine for my purposes. Plus I can stay within the same software and don’t get confused over navigation muscle memory =D
There is also another thing I have to keep reminding myself: I have no obligation to do things the “proper” way. I’m going to cheat. My lines can be the ugliest chicken-scratches I can manage. I’m going to abuse GP sculpt mode if necessary. And even with all the tools I don’t have to actually be GOOD at drawing, dammit!
…It’s with this idea in mind that I actually started getting results again, lol “Results” from my point of view, of course.
You are AMAZING at drawing. I know many people (myself included) who’d pay a lot of money for skills like yours. Unfortunately, skills cost time, practice, and effort, which are all way more valuable than money
It’ll take me a few years of consistent practice to reach your current level of talent.
It’s always amazing to me when somebody whom I consider seriously good at something is unhappy with their own work. It’s all relative, isn’t it. He looks pretty good to me; I mean even with different expressions, he looks like the same person. But I can, even if only very vaguely, appreciate trying to get the likeness right of somebody who only lives in your head. It’s got to be a whole different skill than getting the likeness right when you have reference images. I don’t even know how you do it – everything that’s in my head is nebulous, ethereal, out of focus.
I just discovered GP sculpt mode yesterday! OMG! It is so amazing!!! (<- three, count 'em, THREE exclamation marks. I am VERY excited.) I mean, I cannot draw, and not like you, but like, “even my stick figures are bad”, and this, this opens doors I thought were years down the road.
The rant above came out very self-derogatory (which, giving my natural whiny attitude, is unsurprising).
This is however something I’ve been thinking about for last month. It’s all about setting the right goals.
We tend to hold a lot of expectations of our abilities. Being able to retain the abilities, is one. Get a little better at something, and you’d probably add new, higher standards to the pile. Try a bit of everything and you end up with a lot of things you think you should be able to do by now… and even less time to practice each.
The problem is, it’s so easy to let unfair expectations to creep through. Spend enough time looking at tutorials from professional painters and you’d forget you never aimed to be a pro-painter yourself. But you end up comparing your scribbles to their stunning work, putting aside your actual goals, stressing over inadequacy in areas that don’t even hold that much value to you.
It’s about tiny shifts in perspective that lead from gradual improvement of taste and abilities… and straight into despair.
~Let it GOOO, let if GOOOOOO…~ Well, you know…
This “project” is actually the perfect example of how much I got my perspective skewed by accident: the idea was to make the most cliched straightforward story and characters I could think of on the fly. The designs were not supposed to be second-guessed. Want some crazy mass of gorgeous gravity-defying hair? Do it. Zippers on jackets in a world that can’t mass-produce them yet. You got it. It literally starts with “Once upon a time an evil sorcerer abducted a princess…”
Things got out of hand… Thinking too much is not good for your mental health.
It’s the same for me. I can sort of tell when something is NOT like I imagined, but I have only vague idea of what it supposed to look like.
I have a few key assumptions to start with: this guy is taller than his companions, confident in his strengths, duty-bound to his people, unashamedly fond of romance/adventure novels… he knows where he’s going and walks in the light.
So, over time it somehow translated into shorter hair, higher cheekbones, straighter nose, more open expressions… it’s less knowing what he looks like, and more like trying to find him in a drawing bit by bit
I should tell you that I’ve spent quite a bit of time adjusting that sword-wielding figure above - and it’s like two squares and five sticks =D
It’s funny- I’ve found myself wishing I could make characters as well as you, in 2D or 3D, many many times. It’s honestly really nice to hear your doubts, struggles, and thought processes; it helps me have a more realistic view of my own abilities and what I would need to do to get to your level
Actually, thinking and being cool all the time digs you into depression. Realistic theories are mostly negative thoughts, because that is reality. Reality is a negative and dull thing, and we human beings turned around to go the other way once we realized how done we were and how deep the negativity goes, beyond reason to do anything.
So! Introduce a bit of spice: adrenaline!
You’ll need it! Nowadays I’m going out to drink with random people (sometimes whom I never met) to drain myself of reality’s mud that slowly slows you to a halt. Onwards!
Healthy diet is always refreshing.
Do anything to trick yourself that this world is full of dreams and fun-ness! It really is worth more than living a real life.
We needed reason in the first place, and reason doesn’t come directly from reality, but rather, our dreams. (Especially for artists, right?)
Even if it came from reality, why go back to it? All the dreaming we do makes us go forward in life, I think.
I’m saying this while feeling the same way, but I know it’s eventually the only way out, and I think… it’s getting better
A few squiggly lines don’t count as a plan =D
The problem with drawing without a structure is… not having a structure for later sculpting. I have a habit of drawing “lazy” hair - I draw some random wavy lines however I feel like at the moment. Probably why my “protagonist” characters inevitably end up with sort of curly middle-length hair after a couple of iterations X_X
Well, with Commander (for once) I have a relatively short haircut… amusingly, while originally I had only a vague idea of “short dark hair”, the iterations somehow produced constant basis for the actual design: it’s stuck in a permanently “windswept” look.
…and it’s a PAIN. How to group the strands? How to layer the groups? How to direct the flows?
FAR from final blockout, it’s nowhere near the silhouette I need:
As usual, it took an attempt or two which ended in utter confusion. It wasn’t clear to me how to correctly pick the skin-tones. The various images from Wookiepedia are ALL different in face structure and coloring. The only persistent feature is those high eyebrow arches. Of course, the mere combination of blue, red and white immediately suggest Thrawn, so likeness in not much of an issue =D (at least until Ahsoka is out)
Eventually, I figured out that I can just paint the head texture on the sculpt and then bake. Somehow it’s far less laggy, especially when trying to paint in some gradients, and it doesn’t cast too harsh “shadows” at extreme angles (it’s only really an issue on ears, but still).
The last-second addition is the rim-light. I really wanted a rim-light there - very crisp, shiny, imperial.
It’s an Inverted Hull with most front vertices cut off and tweaked a little at edges. This way the back is not flooded with lights, so harsh lightning doesn’t brake lowpoly shading and nothing obscures the textures. Simple and doesn’t rely on shaders - good for exporting to Sketchfab. The downside is that it’s only good for static models, of course
One thing I really admire about your work is your ability to keep sharp lines on organic forms in 3D (jawbones, cheekbones, noses, lips, eyebrows, etc). It’s a skill that you’ve clearly mastered- I personally really struggle with it, my organic forms tend to blend into more soft edges even when I don’t want them to. Any tips on how you do it?
Create the base shapes with generous use of Scrape Brush. Form edges with Scrape. Remove noises and bumps with Scrape.
Seems like a little thing, but for me it was the most decisive advancement in the workflow. Focus on major planes first, exaggerate them, make them sharp. Then smooth as needed.
Advice I often heard in sculpting tutorials - ditch the Smooth Brush completely! =D (exaggerated somewhat, of course). A lot of ZBrush tutorials just plain tell you to assign Flatten instead of Smooth (here that actually means Scrape, I think). It’s meant to fight the bad habit of smoothing everything into oblivion.
There was a workaround that let you do the same thing in Blender, but I don’t think it works anymore. So one has to exercise some will power and avoid pressing Shift
…I actually use Smooth A LOT, just not near the edges.
I’m so quiet at the moment but wanted to mention how lovely the pose and lighting is! The hands at the right and the hair at the left (from my view) really help draw a diagonal line to grab and lead my attention. Don’t be so hard on yourself (I know, I know); you really have an eye for composition and for getting the feel of a character right. While I think that’s something anyone can get better in, it’s mostly (afaik) something natural/ a talent.
Have fun sculpting, looking forward to your new stuff
Here’s a random GN tree for making curved hair cards from simple unwrapped plane and a curve.
The point was to make a haircard with dynamic loop cuts as curvature demands (as opposed to using Curve Mod on a pre-edited mesh).
Simple. The pros: there’s no need to have some parented meshes in some un-selectable collection, no need to worry about curve-VS-mesh visibility, clicking on curved card let’s user edit the curve itself and, well, it’s just a beveled curve with non-destructive subdivisions and all…
Sadly, it only generates rectangle strips… with lots of transparent empty space where the texture gets clamped or curved I mean, it works exactly as intended, it’s just that intention was not very well thought through… I doubt, if it’s possible at all, that more complex implementation can be built from this - it probably need to be re-worked form scratch. Ah well, brain exercises are good for your health anyway.
It’s not that I’m not doing anything, I’m just being very sloooooooow about it. And doing a lot of backtracking. And walking in circles. And I’m not going to post any actual 3D because it didn’t go well, so here’s some sort of related stuff =P
I keep thinking that I’m not the type to ever paint with color DESPITE the fact that almost all of my textured models are in color I have a whole lot of markers that need to be figured out and put to use though. It’s scary.
Guess I should stop re-making hair every time I open blender and just move on I wish there was a moment where you look at the model and a terrible voice would say “…IT IS DONE”.
Time to sculpt the body.
Thanks)
Logically, I realize I’ve trapped myself with an idea that, with enough tweaking, there will be a point where I’d be suddenly satisfied with the result. Boom! - mission accomplished …Should’ve known better XD
Things constantly shift around and change, and it’s very different from the first iteration… but it’s not necessarily better. The tunnel vision hits hard here. Especially without a proper texture and the rest of the model (and quite a few screws came completely loose in my head lately).
Guess that means it’s time to change my approach.
I can’t quite figure out where the problem lies, if there even is one.
GP works just fine for my purposes. Plus I can stay within the same software and don’t get confused over navigation muscle memory =D
“Results” from my point of view, of course.
I have a whole lot of markers that need to be figured out and put to use though. It’s scary.
