Sculpting a lookalike character

Hello blender artists!!
I am learning to digital sculpt in blender. I want to make a realistic render of my favorite poet. I`ve put effort in to sculpting the eyes, nose and mouth as close as possible as in the reference picture. But something doesn’t add up, it starts to look a bit but not as much I would expect. What I am missing? This person, I am trying to sculpt, has only 3 picture and all of them are from this angle, non from front or lateral. Any advice? Maybe I am rushing things and without hair and textures it is for the most part finished. :thinking:
PS: I dont know what focal length to use as old cameras from that period had changeable lenses from 35 to 100mm. My bet is on 35.
Thank you!

Hi, this is a very good sculpt, it is extremely difficult to do without side and front view ref’s.
I usually walk away from the work and look at it later, you will see more details that way.
I have market the obvious points that i could see: Hair residing further back/ larges forehead.
Lower lip narrower in photo. Chin slightly narrower. Cheeks slightly more puff. Distance of eye from eyebrow need to be slightly larger. The lines both side of the nose shallower. Also the jaw needs to be less angular.
Good luck.

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Thank you for your advice! I will take them into account. I will leave it for some time and look upon it with fresh eyes. :pray: Thank you again!

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Only having three reference photos from one angle is not ideal. Overall I think you did a pretty good job, especially considering your reference image challenges.

I don’t know what focal length they preferred in the old days for camera lens for portraits, but wider is considered better these days - 80mm seems to be favored by professionals - so even if it was different, I wouldn’t bet on 35mm back then. I wouldn’t set my viewport on 35mm when sculpting a person either, I think you’ll end up with a distorted model if you do that. I’d stick with 50mm if you’re unsure. To give you an idea how big an effect this can have, here’s the same character in three windows, each set to a different focal length: 35mm, 50mm, and 80mm:

In addition to digitvisions recommendations, I think the overall face looks a little wide, eyebrow is too sharp, nostrils might be slightly wide, or maybe they just need to be angled up a little more. Lower lip is a little wide and the face feels like it might be angled or pushed forward a little too much - but that could just be a matcap issue.

And you’re correct: you’re doing a likeness of someone with facial hair, so until the model has facial hair, it’ll probably look off even with improvements (same with eyebrows). I also don’t like to rely entirely on what it looks like in mat cap. Setting up a simple shader and lighting to see how the forms respond when actually lit helps.

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Not so sure I can offer any additional advice, but just wanted to say, even though it isn’t a perfect likeness at its current stage, you’ve done a really good job so far!

I believe his forehead is a bit thinner and higher in the picture.
Also, the top part of the curve of his nose is a bit higher if compared to the eyes.

Actually, you can’t just consider the focal length of a lens but also the distance of the object to the camera as the distortions are different depending on the distance. A lens of 18 millimeters tends to make the nose larger but this distortion diminishes as the object gets farther from the camera.

That’s your problem, portrait lenses are usually between 80-200mm. 35 is way too low. 35 is a landscape lens. Crank your focal length up to 100 and work from there

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