Hello all!
I have spent the last week working on this project, adding and tweaking etc. It’s taught me a lot about cycles!
Sculpting: blender
Modelling: blender
Shading: Cycles
Lighting: Cycles
Hair: Cycles
Textures: Photoshop
Hope you like him 
Crit is welcomed!
needs eyelashes! good job though.
I did put them in, but I don’t think they showed up because the lightness on the hair, I’ll fix it! 
Hi there, bonrw1,
I see you finally managed to post your wip thread
As for the project:
Good work on the mesh. I would recommend tweaking the contrast between the jacket and the face a little, however. The jacket shouldn’t be brighter than the face, since the face is the focus of the piece. A good way to keep an eye on the contrast of the image is to temporarily desaturate the image so the colors won’t distract you and change it back afterwards.
Hi! 
thanks for the advice! I’ll fix all these quickly in a minute!
Nice work! Looking good
Just two notes, the neck is getting thinner half way down. which is a bit odd, and you could work a bit on the unwrapping of the shirt’s texture to make it spread more realistically. Specially the collar, the pattern is coming out warped. And you could split the mesh where the sewing would happen.
Thanks for the advice! I’m tendering an update 
Well done, bonrw1. I agree with what the other posters said in the previous posts. Additionally I would change the lighting for the final render. His face could be better illuminated. Did you try a three point lighting with a key-, fill- and back-light yet?
I really like what you did with the particle hair. The skin also looks good - although it has a bit too much red on my screen, but that could be the lighting, perhaps. The modelling looks also good. It would be interesting to see him from other angles to see more of the anatomy.
Nice work so far!
Minoribus! A master blender! Thank you for you feedback! This is just what I need! Unfortunately, I have limited computer time, so I might not be able to get things tweaked straight away! I would do a turntable of the head, but I don’t know how to render in cycles… 
@minoribus: Oh, and thanks about the hair, it was my first try! 
OK, update time…This took about 2 hours to render due to his hair, so I’ll hide that next time. I changed to contrast between the face and he shirt, and made the eyebrows more visible. Tomorrow, I will look through you’re notes, and get a new render done!
That’s definitely an improvement!
I still think the face could use more light, which could also give you some highlights for the eyes, making them look a bit more alive.
Good update, bonrw1 and good point about the eyes, teaLeaf. You must give the eyes something to reflect, because there is always a reflection if you look at eyes. And you must make this reflection sharp, because the eye has a wet surface. For the reflections the best way is to use an HDR image in the world nodes. Because this gives a realistic lighting. But for the start some mesh lights in front of the face could work also.
looks good great job!! :yes:
Thanks guys! 
I did another render, and fixed some stuff, (like the eyes) and added a quick background (nothing perfect yet, just an outline ;)) Oh, and also, I didn’t render it with the hair because it takes AGES to render with that. I think the shirt is a little bit dark, so I might do another render over night (with the hair…) I also have posted a pic of the mesh and some wire pics!
This is heading in a good direction. Nice work! (Maybe pick a darker background? I feel it’s pulling a little too much attention)
The face and hair are very well done! The texturing and the bump of the shirt is also done well. You can also try mixing a Velvet BSDF shader with the Diffuse BSDF shader to get a more realistic cloth effect. This might help the shirt blend better with the face.
Yeah, what kind if background do you suggest? What kind of theme?
Good progress again. I like the reflection in the eyes and I’m still impressed by his hairline. The normal maps in #14 are also nice and clean.
Now I have some points which came to my mind looking at your image.
If you compare the frontal wires and the render in your post #14 they look like heads of different persons. That’s because you made a screenshot of the wires in orthographic mode of the viewport, I guess. And for the render you most probably used the default focal length of 35mm. But photographers would use a focal length of 50mm or 80mm for such a portrait. You would be surprised what a difference that would make.
I think that you used subsurface scattering, and you did that well. The only area that is really washed out and lost are his lips. Perhaps you could use a sss map or define a different material for the lips.
The shape of the eyes is a little bit off. I hope that you don’t mind my little paint over, that I did with a little help from http://www.drawinghowtodraw.com/drawing-lessons/drawing-faces-lessons/howtodraw-eyes-tutorials.html 
The frontal tendons on his neck (I don’t know the right English word for them) are too strong. In a relaxed pose like this they wouldn’t show up that much.
Just a little note on the background. This isn’t a bad background. For the final image I would recommend something more interesting, perhaps a setting that would tell a bit about the character. But in any case you should be aware of tangents. Intersecting lines can make your image harder to read. The readability of your image is good, but there is this unfavourable intersection behind his neck. Maybe you can rotate that image or chose another part of it.
I see that you gave it a fabric structure and added a little bump, which is a good thing. But no tailor would cut and sew a shirt from a panel of fabric like that. Your UV seams should follow the real seams of such a piece of cloth. Here are the UV Island that I made for one of the shirts in my project. (Not the best UV layout because there are huge blank spaces, but I had to follow the orientation of the fabrics texture. And in the screenshot you see the normal map below the UVs.)One last thing for today
Don’t worry, you are doing a really good job here. It took me much longer to get where you are now.
Wow! Minoribus! Thank you so much! I really need stuff like this unfortunately, I don’t work on blender on Sunday, and tomorrow is my sisters birthday, So I’ll be a bit inactive for a day or two. I really see what you mean about the shirt! And I’ll tweak it as soon as I can! About the eyes…I’m no good at eyes…I try really hard to get them right, but they never look any good. I really want to see Doris’s tutorial on how to sculpt the eyes in SculptCookie, but It’s citizen. Would you know of any other tutorials on sculpting eyes?
Once again! Thank you so very much
