I feel like I understand the more technical aspects of modeling the face/head of a character, like getting the right face loops and poly density and whatnot, but I feel like I have trouble actually getting the face to look good. Things like how to structure the mouth and lips for both characters with exaggerated lips and characters with no visible lips, or how just in general to make characters with bigger eyes work. Really just anything in the realm of stylization.
I mostly do poly modelling with just a basic sculpt for the overall shape, but anything that goes in detail with both poly modelling and full-on sculpting should help. Free or paid should be fine too, as long as it isn’t crazy expensive, I just feel like it’s harder to find the good stuff underneath all the super simple beginner tutorials that don’t have what I need, or people who are really good at making what I’d want to make but don’t really go deep into the methodology of how to achieve what they do and instead just do it with general tips.
IDK if such courses exists but maybe, probably something about character design…
What I can say is that character designer have a lot of mileage so it’s possible for them to come up with something good in the first go. Or at least very quickly. Beside that, they generally gravitates toward a particular style so they have developed their own design rules/principles through the years.
But even with these guys in command designing a character always takes a lot of time and iterations on real projects.
If you refer to actual movies or series you should acknowledge that there is probably 20 or 100 versions before the one you see on screen. Furthermore when there is a next season or movie they still find room for improvements on the design therefore they generally slightly update it.
My first advice is try that out , take a model that you wish to improve and start iterating, either in 3D either doing paint-overs or using 2D tools like liquiify or cage deform.
Generally the first iteration got a little something that you start to loose, then you might get even more horrible results or interesting experiments but that doesn’t really fit… And eventually you’ll find a much more refined version that would be impossible to make on the first go. At least that’s how it worked for me when I had to come up with good characters…
My second advice is don’t hesitate to copy existing characters, it’s ok to take inspiration from other artists especially when learning.
At least that’s generally how you learn to draw, by copying other artists and eventually come up with a style of your own…
Finally there is no mystery in that being difficult, faces are the hardest and a slight change can make or break the character, or tells a completely different story…
If this is new to you, you can’t expect to get to the same speed / level as seasoned designer or illustrator, but by taking your time and iterate over the result you should be able to get something much more convincing…
Thanks I guess, but iteration feels fruitless when you’re literally just shooting in the dark. Especially since I’m like 70-80% of the way to being satisfied, but just need to figure out what that last little push needs to be.
Maybe could help to just dump some more specific examples to see where my mind is going (with my 2D references, which aren’t 1000% on what I want but just to have them there).
Like this guy I feel like has most of the right shapes, but it doesn’t feel like the light is bouncing off him right. His eyes feel too flat mostly
Her face is like mostly fine but I just don’t feel like there’s enough going on, especially with the mouth feeling a bit basic. I kind of wanted like a more soft upper lip but with a flat lower lip to kind of replicate how I draw her, but it definitely doesn’t come across well
And only one more, but it’s an attempt of my favorite character of mine who I never felt like I could get right in 3D. I probably need to shrink her eyes at least, but more rounded faces like this feel so much harder to get right (same as above)
A : your image
B : I just lowered the face, closer to natural proportions and get rid of the plastic feel on the skin…
C : added some expression, more details on the face / hairs…
One main issue you have to deal with is that your references are very 2D, basically some stuff that works there tends to look weird once you introduce more realism.
Your two main options are either make a more stylized 3D going NPR and such.
Or make your reference more 3D by introducing more shading and natural forms and eventually make your character a bit more like pixar/disney with for instance realistic hairs, many facial details but exaggerated.
You can keep the design very 2D, and eventually make the character more pixar-like, but you’ll have much more guesswork. On some areas you’ll have to be closer to human proportions in order to make it work.
My point is that your concepts are challenging to begin with which adds more difficulty to get the 3D model right.
Basically the concept will work better if it’s made with 3D in mind right from the start.
Finally you should make some facial expressions on your characters, it’s super difficult to judge when the character got a neutral pose. You can use some shape keys to add at least a simple smile, and it will work much better. In the same fashion try to make a neutral pose on your drawing and you’ll see that they’ll be less appealing…
I have made facial expressions with them, and while they do help they still feel like they need something. Although with this specific render I also feel like I need to improve on the lighting lol
As for referencing the pics, like I said I’m not trying to replicate them 1000% exactly. I just want to represent the character’s features enough in a 3D space (the 3 good ones at the bottom also had 2D references I felt like I got right enough)
Even though it’d be cool to make a model that almost exactly resembles my 2D art I feel like it’s a lot more practical for me to just make a new style in 3D that just approximates what I strive for in 2D
These days, YouTube videos are produced between 10 and 20 minutes of playback time.
That’s why it will be hard to find a video with a kind explanation.
But it’s helpful to see how they work,
Well I think it sells the character much better with some expressions.
Anyway I get that you don’t want to stay 100% close to the reference and that’s just a starting point…
Making a reference is a way to solve problems beforehand, which is generally faster than solving them in 3D. Doing back and forth between 3D and 2D is a good way to let the design evolve, without wasting too much time iterating in 3D.
That said, to me the character is working, now what can be improved really goes down to creative decisions and design language. Unless you’re aiming at a particular existing style, I fear only you can find out what you feel is missing, if you ask 100 people you’re likely to get 100 different answers.
Again, to me it’s kind of ok, now if you really want to push the boundaries you’ll have to iterate and eventually figure out what bugs you.
What works for me is to jump between paint-over and 3D. Look for extremes, how far you can push something in one direction in order to find the good balance. As said earlier generally it takes time before you get to a better model. Generally you have to go through a bunch of crappier result until you end up with something much refined than the initial version. But that’s just according to my limited experience…
The lighting is good enough IMO you can make a better one but I don’t think it will change the perception of the character.
Have fun and keep practicing, eventually you’ll improve !
Mostly just posting to update, but I did find this decent tutorial which more or less just gave me the gumption to build out faces with more geometry so I’m not extruding as much, which helped with things like the nose and especially the bridge of the nose where I felt like things got a little pinched before
Tried making her again, even though I’m not really satisfied still I feel like the geometry is there meaning that I at least should just tweak it a bit.
More importantly tho, I reused her face to redo another
This is pretty much as perfect as I can expect for her, something just feels so much better than the older version. Part of what I did was completely redo the eyes (for the first one too) where I did the thing which I did way earlier but renounced and now coming back to, where I make the iris concave and have a glassy lens on top of it. Something about it just feels nicer, I think I just renounced it because I wanted something more stylized, but the combo is so much better. But, another thing I did earlier and now am using again is using a lattice to deform the whole eye to make it overall flatter in the head while still being rotatable with bones. Really both of those things sort of came back to me from the tutorial.
I guess one other thing I learned from it was how to structure the mouth going into the cheek somewhat, basically you just have to make it fan down in a sort of way. I don’t think it looks perfect here but it did work out for the tutorial
And even though it’s not relevant to faces the tutorial also showed how good it was to use the Surface Deform modifier for attaching clothes to a body instead of messing with rigging, assuming the clothes are simple enough. Definitely going to use that lol (even though the first time I tried it it was with a character who had a boolean mouth and the modifier did NOT like that)
