Back in the old days, it took sculptors years, even decades to finish a life-sized marble statue. From Donatello, Michelangelo, Bernini, to Canova, they all spent their years away exactly the same way. Not to mention, most master sculptors didn’t work alone. They’re helped by a few to dozens of apprentices.
Back to the present, today, I alone made each of these in a day.
The secret? For one, even though I consciously made it look like a marble, obviously it’s not made of marble and it’s made digitally in Blender. The other, well, it’s not exactly a sculpture at all. It’s simply a rig.
Well, it’s not very appealing in the rest pose, isn’t it? Very much like a human body itself.
Some time ago, not so long time ago to be honest, I made this post. That was a sculpture, a proper sculpture. I sculpted it in a sense that it’s practically set from top to toe, just like the old master sculptors did.
Me, coming from traditional 2D and 3D world, just realized it by now, that my folly was to try forcing a traditional method onto a modern tool.
Did it produce a great result? Yes, it did, perfect indeed. But the question is, why?
Why do I, or any other, need to sculpt it in a way that it’s practically set, like it’s set on an actual marble stone or clay? Because, well, it’s not an actual marble stone or clay. It’s digital, a mere string of vertices, edges, and faces.
But looking on the great side, 3D objects can be duplicated as many times as one wishes, the one thing traditional sculpting can’t do.
I’ve praised and recognized the advantage of reworkability and reusability of 3D stuff (and frustrated over its technicality) since day one. So it doesn’t really make sense to sculpt 3D human sculpture to set. But back then, I didn’t really know how either.
That’s why I decided to make my own ‘default’ base mesh of human body, which I can then reshape to fit the unique shapes which individual human body possesses. This way, I can focus more on the making of the actual artwork, than the technical stuff which I find, at best, boring.
When I made the earlier post, I set out to finding the ultimate 3D base mesh of human body, so that I can rework and reuse it, in a way that makes sense to me, a 2D artist.
Well, it seems that I have found it. And in dong so, I have found, not only the base mesh, but the ultimate 3D human in a package.
I know this seems like a great accomplishment on its own. But to quote Sir Isaac Newton, “If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.”
I’m standing on the legacy of the old masters who have stood before me. And thanks to them, and to my Toby rig, that I may stand still.
And who knows, it now looks close enough to a marble, so maybe one day I will figure out how to 3D print these to an actual marble.
Okay that’s it for now. If you’re interested, let me know what you think of it!