I had an idea long ago for a character that, for want of time, and through incredibly average modelling and generally haphazard execution, panned out as a disaster and disappeared with a hard-drive crash into the unmemorable depths of time.
Time to try again, I think. I doubt I’ll win, because there’s some pretty stiff competition; not least being one of Montage Studio’s own, but…
Hey hey hey, it’ll be fun. 
well, that is a bloody good start anyhow.
wow that’s great! she already has a natural look to her
dummy scene setup. very dummy
Looks great. Love the angle of the “dummy” render.
Lips look great. How is the topology?
I like a lot the test render too, it’s a very natural pose, it already makes her look more life-like 
that’s a great start :rolleyes:
Rore: Sweet. That’s encouraging.
Stouckol: Thanks, I’m out of practice, though, so I’m glad I have the three months.
Bigbad: Thanks, but it’s nothing special; here:
I really like the face, it looks so natural:) I’m really looking forward to your updates
And now for something completely different
As lovely as the render is; I think there is some deficiencies in the overall mesh with respect to the idea that these competition models should be capable of animation.
Mainly, around the mouth the edgeloops don’t appear to include the full natural barrel shape of a human mouth. IMHO, the loops around the mouth should begin at the bottom of the nose. Otherwise you could have some awkwardness in animating.
The other thing that bothers me is the high density of polys in some rather unnecessary places such as the tip of the nose. With modern subdivision algorithms, an underlying mesh is more like a modifier than a representation of the exact geometry of the rendered model.
For a young face where cheeks have not yet begun to sag and wrinkle, you really don’t need so many edges surounding the nose/cheek/chin area. All of these edges will need to move together smoothly and yet at different rates for animation making for extra work.
You have a wonderful eye for beauty and she is a clear winner in the still portrait class.
heya, bobg. I’m going to have to put up a slight disagreement with you on the “animatable” issue, maybe a bit OT but maybe not.
For animation, it would be much more likely that an animation-optimized mesh of fairly low resolution would be used, with detailed features applied by use of a tangent space normal map baked from a high-rez sculpt. The sculpted mesh could be optimized for sculpting in terms of loops, quads count, occasional poles and tris, and the like, and have no effect whatsoever on successful animation. So the “rule” is a bit out of place. I think it was more intended to insure that the models could be viewed “in the round” instead of from only a single camera viewpoint, thus insuring that camera view projection-mapping could not be the sole texture mapping technique.
However, your points about good topology are quite sound and helpful.
great start on the portrait, ZJ!
Nice scene ambiance.
Looking good man, also like the dummy scene which makes me think of summer here in sweden. Of course for the full effect you’d have to exchange whatever it is she’s holding with a beer!
Well, it probably won’t be beer that she’ll end up holding (doesn’t sound all bad though). Anyway: I was off modelling for a few days, due to various non-specific circumstances, and now I’m back with a gift; because I’m sure at least one of you out there has something better to do than sitting around modelling these dang things all day, I give you, for your own extremely licensed use, a zipper pull.
zipper pull 1.blend (165 KB)
I blocked up all her clothes, and for your benefit I drew some last-minute hair on her with the grease pencil. Man, there are so many uses for that thing.
And now comes the fun part where I start screaming uncontrollably. Modelling wrinkles. I would go the sculpting route, except I kind of have one of the crummiest video-cards created since the dawn of time. The ATI RADEON All-in-Wonder VE. Apparently it uses a series 7500 chipset as its mainframe, and judging from the performance I get out of that thing, I can believe it. So it’s down to good old knife tool action and judicious poly-pulling, here’s to hoping I don’t make too terrible a disaster of it.
Looking really good. A beer is never wrong, just keep it in mind ;D Also thanks for the zipper pull gift, for my untrained eye atleast it seems VERY accurate! I’m certain it will come in handy and I’ll be sure to credit you when it does. BTW do you have a good zipper to go along with that? 
Because texturing is serious bidness.
Hi, the model looks really nice so far!
Will be interesting to see how those textures work out together
very nice! Can’t wait to see you finish this up.
Before I hit the sack. Speaking of hitting, please tell me the problems you can see. I’d love to kill them.
Be aware that I know about some of the most obvious ones (the eyes are no-where near finished) but it’s always nice to have these things re-affirmed by an eye more critical and less connected than mine.
Now I’m going to sleep on the problems and let tomorrow give me what it likes.
Romeo: There’s no zipper, unfortunately — I was just thinking of using a normal-mapped plane — but I could probably make one.