Kicking in to overdrive and trying to sculpt as much as I can when I have free time. Here are a some of the sculpts done this month in my spare time;
I did this yesterday, trying to use a traditional method for creating a figure. Using a very simple armature created with zspheres then after posing using a standard sphere with dynamesh in order to sculpt over the top of the wire mesh. It was fine up until the point of adding the arms.
What I might do in future is append spheres separately for each ligament (and one for torso) then merge them after getting to a certain point as I was having some problems with the back/shoulder muscles. When it was all 1 mesh re-toplogising with dynamesh was causing that area to get even harder to fix.
I do like the posing and then sculpting asymmetrically. I think it adds a weight from the start which can be missing from the sculpture process, as well as possibly a more natural feel (not working in symmetry). I quickly concepted an orc/ogre from the base form I created which worked well.
Earlier in the month I was trying to work in different styles. After watching so many effects videos and prosthetics videos (the Stan Winston school vids on youtube are awesome!) I decided to go for a prosthetic/ mask style. Zbrush could be used to concept these ideas quickly before a mask/makeup was created. Below is an orc and goblin with this in mind.
Below: Removing symmetry from the mesh and testing some ideas for the old orc.
Moving on with trying different styles I tried going for a highly stylised look. One of the weaker areas I have in zbrush (and 2d drawing) like a lot of beginners is the work can end up being a little 'soft' so tried to incorporate hard edges to help emphasis the 'thug' character.
Below: I wanted to just see how it would look like if I turned him in to the punisher/frank castle. I prefer the armoured look from punisher max and the most recent movie (the dude's not bulletproof!). This was done using extract mesh and imm curves
The alien head below was heavily based on Jordu's creature/mas work. This was a bust/head project to see if I could work a model over a number of sessions. I completed it over 3 sessions, then recorded it over 4 videos. The link is below the image (probably better to load in youtube itself to see all 4 parts).
Still a few days left in the month to try and get some more work on. I'm going back to Casey Love's SWS digital to practical lesson and trying some 2d concepting to try and increase my skills in building character and story within a character.
