The facial structure is at a nice place, I thought. Skin wringles, foldings, etc
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Learning experience/failure.
I though to myself, let’s use 3D scans for the trees and then try to modify them in sculpting to speed everything up aka being lazy. Well, wasted too much time trying to modify meshes consisting of triangles.
Next session → back to drawing board, meaning make your own goddamn trees. 
A bit angry with myself but I’m taking it as a learning experience.
Some notes:
- don’t waste time trying to modify something for what feels like hours
- rethink lights, name them, group them, know their purpose
- find out how to use the denoiser without losing every single detail
- sculpt trees, don’t overcomplicate it
- stick to the vision in your mind and don’t settle on something else only because you don’t know yet how to do it
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I think that’s an actual valid approach and valid learning experience. It’s not lazy per se, it could be working smart. But unless you’ve done it you don’t necessarily know whether that’s the right workflow for this particular situation, or for yourself in general. And you do need to invest time to give a new approach a reasonable try, because when you’re new to it you might not have the wherewithal to do it well enough to actually assess whether it’s useful or not.
Don’t be too hard on yourself.
I like the way those trees look, all gnarled up. But I’m sure the next iteration will probably look even better, because that’s how it’s gone so far. 
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Thank you a lot for your feedback and thoughts. You’re right, it’s an approach that could have made sense would I be more experienced or knew what sort of objects I was getting.
Well, since I have the wonderful characteristic of overcomplicating things, I decided to be honest with myself - I can’t sculpt trees yet. I tried to, but they didn’t look nearly what I’d wanted them to be and I clearly need to practice for that. Which is completely fine, I need to practice everything I want to do, but I feel like I’m dragging this model a bit too long.
So I just started thinking about ways I could achieve what I’d like in another way and yay for plane textures 
Next time I think I’ll experiment some more with maybe a background image, this is something I wanted to learn anyway in Blender (camera projection/painting in layers and then importing them into Blender).
Focusing on better lighting. Neeext:
- Paint roughness map (antlers need to have different values than snout etc)
- Spec map
- figure out background
- maybe lashes
- maye revisit hair
- subsurface map for ears
- find a way to array ivy or the leaves along the antlers
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There is an ivy generator add-on (free, included with Blender) that does a really great job from the images I’ve seen: https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/addons/add_curve/ivy_gen.html
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@piranha4D Will check it out, thank you for the link! (:
Little update, reworked the lighting (watched a particular video about emulating disney lighting in Blender that helped a lot), started animating (very basic and not happy), first shapekey as a learning tool, hair is hidden because I need to redo it
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Can you share the link for this video?
A tiny update.
Last days have been slow and I was already doubting myself (again). Fun thoughts like: “What are you even doing? Shouldn’t you just concentrate on one thing?” or “Is 3D really what you want to do? Look at everyone else. You’ve lost so much time.”
I’m just writing this here for my own records. I know that professional sketchbooks (or social media in general) don’t look like that but … this is the truth. I’m doubting myself along the way, because I’ve always been interested and “sort of doing” different things. As soon as I concentrated on one topic, sooner than later a not-so-friendly voice pops into my head and yells at me that I should quit and … well, you get the idea.
One thing I noticed with 3D besides the pure joy of learning and pushing myself is the possibility of combining passions. Like writing and music. Maybe I can find a place for myself here, hide for some years while learning (well, maybe hide in this sketchbook, hah) and then… some day everything will make sense. I really, really hope so. This “don’t focus on this, do that” and “master of none” etc has been haunting me since I was little.
On that note. Small wins. I learned how to add music/sound. Have fun listening to a very rough song idea with a guitar that def needed to be retuned 
I don’t know where this will take me. All I know is I want to find out if theres a way to combine the passions. And if I’m able to do something out of it, if I only trust the process.
Stag still has weight errors (although I spent time fixing, I really need to figure weight painting out), fur material shows as black although I followed a tutorial for eevee fur materials, thats the reason it’s not included, the antlers look like plastic, the snout still has no spec… But! I learned stuff!
Creepy looking stag with snippet of song idea (without Multires, because holy maccaroni does this affect render times 
):
(Yay, first uploaded video, woohoo
)
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It’s good to see you post here 
you’re in good company with the doubts. Personally, every time I look at your stag, I feel a sharp twinge of despair that goes something like this - “why am I even trying? This is so much better than anything I will ever do!” And truth be told, that’s true right now, you are light years ahead of me, as is StrayBille, and Piranha, and so many other people here. But there’s something inside me that also says “someday, you’ll be able to do that someday, if you just do something today”, and I have to really work to make that voice louder.
Nowadays when I sit down at Blender and start freaking out, I try to take a deep breath and say “I don’t need to make something good. I just need to make something” and, the more I practice doing that, the easier it gets.
Anyway, your stag looks awesome!
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Thank you for your thoughts and feedback!
Funny enough I get the same feeling of despair when I look at your or the other sketchbooks. When you mentioned that you’re more comfortable polymodelling a face than sculpting, I was like “what?”
Yeah, “if you just do something today”. Focusing on what’s in front of myself and not on the gremlins inside my head. Thank you.
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The only reason I don’t feel that sharp twinge is that this is my underlying feeling all the time – y’all are so much better at modeling of characters than I am, if I stopped and paid attention to that for any length of time I’d curl up in the fetal position and feel sorry for myself.
I think I am just more used to a lifetime of that form of silent adversity, which makes it a little easier to ignore and just plod on. All those people afraid of AI – I don’t even bother because human artists are generally so much better than I am already. I am never, ever, free of self-doubt, and whenever I might have some success in something, the impostor syndrome immediately rears its ugly head. And let’s not even mention the miserable voice of my Calvinist work ethics, which thinks art is frivolous and I should be doing real work.
So you see, @good_omen, you are in uh, “good” company.
That is quite creepy! Nicely done! Those glowing eyes, it felt like he was gonna come for me any moment when he lowered his head. That rim light is cool.
I think this definitely has the strong possibility of being a uniting focus for those varying interests you have – writing and music seem to me like natural companions to 3D animation, which ideally has a strong story and supporting music so it’s not all about “mere” technical prowess, which can feel empty all on its own. Jack of all trades, master of none is actually a great attitude to have if you want to work in several disciplines; there’s definitely a lot of cross fertilization that happens.
It also makes for an interesting life to want to explore different artistic aspects. That matters too, and might be more fulfilling in the long run than monomaniacal concentration on one and only one thing.
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Aha, ha.
Yes, I second this. I have a lot of hobbies, and can’t keep up. I swore I could’ve been a professional at something had I sticked to the one thing, but I still can’t decide. How can you resist? I want to do this, I want to do that. I have endless passion for the things I’m yet to discover…
I have decided one thing though, that I need constant change, I need to keep moving.
I sometimes think 
, I should’ve done this when I was 10. Regardless of the procedure needed that progressed me to this point in time, where many others too think the same thing. Better with others though. I think I’m fortunate enough to stay original with a good sense of self preservation, with people far away seconding my mindset.
An artist once said that you can only have one job, one strong passion, one profession. I say why not move around town to see which one you really like. And on this trip I can experience much more than those of single strengths. That’s a story to tell. I would like to think , maybe I’m right! Sometimes it’s better to keep dreaming.
I feel like the journey is more worth than pro-skill, especially in terms of originality and creativity.
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@piranha4D @Minamookevlar Thank you both for your insight and thoughts, as always. I think one of my bad habits is to overthink instead of focusing on doing the work. All this time spent worrying could have been used for other things (improving). When I think about it, the unpleasant truth for me is that I use this behavior - I can’t decide, help - as an Escape Mechanism, at least I think that’s what it’s called in English.
In this regard - I won’t beat myself up for not updating my sketchbook the last few weeks (although I normally would): I’ve been busy writing and now I’m coming back to 3D. And I’ve been painting and practicing and I’m learning that I really enjoy learning from traditional painters. I’m even thinking about finding a Oil Paint Class, although my hometown doesn’t really have anything in this regard.
Enough blabbering. I’m excited to be active here again. 
Tried out doing a timelapse for the first time
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PLZwMQgyuI
Things to improve:
- far too many strokes and areas → focus on the basic planes of the head
- too much grey in the chin-area
- necks are not flat, volume isnt there
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Because I want to update:
Will finish the stag in a few days, meanwhile beginning sculpt with exploring workflows and to do something different, noticing how important good remeshing is in between steps - still not getting comfortable with dyntopo
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Things… escalated. God I love sculpting.
Still at around 50k, practicing to get the muscles right before remeshing for higher polycounts. Currently testing out QuadRemesher and I’m pretty sure I’ll subscribe for the addon, seems to be a great workflow (Dyntopo → QuadRemesh → further sculpting → QuadRemesh in between → retopo by hand → project details → multires for high frequency details … I think)
Really want to learn the new hair tool. Maybe… maybe with this model? But I still have the stag waiting. Aaah.
Anyways. I hope you guys have a fantastic weekend filled with creativity and learning.
Things to improve (and 500 things more that I don’t see yet):
- head needs to be wider
- ears are not correct
- eyesockets not quite there yet
- belly / leg anatomy
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Dang dude, you are an excellent sculptor!
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It’s so much fun. Still a lot to learn. Thank you.
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Kitty! 
Makes me want to drop everything and go sculpt some cat-like creatures. You are an inspiration!
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Right back at you! Your character work is very inspiring.
Hah, do it! 
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