Struthless Superletters challenge: Apollo feedback wanted

[Clueless1 (Clueless)]

Hey everyone i will try to keep it short.
i am an amateur 3d artist based in egypt

and i decided to take on the struthless “challenge”.My theme is greek gods and i am using this challenge to improve my sculpting quality, master anatomy and impove my process.

for the first letter, A, I am sculpting my intrepretation of the greek god apollo the pose is half ballet dance pose (bottom) and upper body as if he is holding a bow (WIP) .

What i would like to ask is a couple of things, First, when it comes to rendering how can i get the same reflection and highlights present in viewport/workbench when enabling shadows?
I’d like to get the same “gradations” and transitions from shade to light, but, in cycles.

Second, Does any of the forms look wrong ? i have been staring at it for way too long, and, i feel like i can’t see my mistakes any more…how can i get cleaner forms?

lastly, if you have any advice on a good texture setup for this kind of work, i won’t unwrap, so, it has to be vertex paint or object/generated mapping using the high res mesh infront of u. The texture i want is for showcasing the sculpt, i think it’s something called clayrender(i jsut want the texture aesthetically pleasing and compliments the sculpt. any suggestion is fine)

That’s all and thank you. i never really use forums at all this is my second post on this site, i feel i dragged for a bit long, so, please feel free to tell me if i am lacking in presenting my questions or my work. i’d like to make my posts more accessible and respectful, thank you again.

P.S i didn’t refine the clavicle bone

[Sandtail (Vincentius Sesarius)]

For lighting, Viewport/Benchwork lighting is kind of artificial light which mimics studio lights regardless of the angle.

Meanwhile, Cycles is real-world physical ray based lighting which mimics real world lighting which are directly influenced by how you set up the lighting in Blender. By using Cycles, you get to decide the kind of lighting you want.

So I guess what you need is not ‘Cycles that looks like Viewport’ but rather how to create the object’s shader/texture that mimics Viewport’s shader/texture.

I have done marble sculpt texture before, but I have never got to try the red clay texture. Probably I’ll have to do some tests.

I guess the first thing you should consider is the pose itself. That neck twist looks almost impossible to me. The rest is all about anatomy. I did a draw over over the first image.

First you should consider which side of the torso is bending and which one is stretching. For me, I feel that the left side (our right) is the one bending, and the right side is the one stretching.

[Clueless1 (Clueless)]

that’s really helpful thank you, i will post my two references for the pose and hopefully that can give a bit more information on what i am trying to do i will adjust the neck according to ur feedback, thank you.