Recognizing progress - The Journey of Sculpting

RuN

Brazil234 Posts

September 27 2011 22:26 GMT

Hello everyone,

In this blog post I am going to talk a little bit about how my art has been progressing and the importance that should be given to comparing your old work with your new one.

In my last big milestone blog : http://www.teamliquid.net/blogs/viewblog.php?topic_id=220932 I thanked the community and all my friends for helping me through the tough times that I like to call "breaking the ice" so just read up on that if you are curious.

I want to start off by posting the first improvement that I saw in my work, this the first thing I realized that I needed to work on.

Likenesses:

Likenesses to this day are still very difficult for me, however I've made strong progress and that is what this thread is all about.

First Attempt - Tyler:

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I had a lot of reference for this and it is to my great shame that I failed as hardcore as I did back then, it "kind of" looks like him and thats not good enough. You have to look at it without knowing its Tyler and say it is him. There are a great many things to fix here but overall it was a good attempt.

I noticed that I spent over 5 hours to do that. Unacceptable.

Moving forward and coming to a more recent sculpt, lets compare. (this is a few months old still)

Second Attempt - IdrA

Here I feel is one of my best likenesses sculpts, and most importantly it was done in about 2 hours and with minimal reference. I still was not feeling confident about lips or eyes back then and so left them quite bare. The progress however is visible and I am very happy to have been able to reach something that looks close to him. Nowadays he has a new hair cut / beard but I think you can still tell who he is.

Things to take away from this is that overall facial structure is not correct as some key features are missing such as cheekbones and a more defined jawline as well as minor details such as finished lips and eyes. An important piece of information that did not occur to me is that hair plays a large part in identifying someone

Women and feminine features:

To this day I had sculpted one or two women in my whole sculpting career, they were not good.
I needed to rectify this and so I did.

First Ever Sculpt:

What do I need to say? Lips , eyes , nose all pretty bad.. and no hair. This was last year I think around December.

Second Attempt

Here you can see me struggling with the facial features again, lips and eyes are better however and overall it looks like a girl.. there is even color !!

3rd , 4th and 6th attempt.

Here I feel I can say that I've started to nail down what women are suposed to look like. From breast positioning (Thanks Ariwalol) to overall facial structure and hair. The last picture you see was done in about 40 minutes while the other two easily took me 1 hour to 2 hours to make. While the latest one has some mistakes it is really a very rough and quick sketch so please excuse the neck muscles being a bit bent after I rotated the bust.

Overall Anatomy and reference use + Confidence to challenge myself

I don't want to go over my human anatomy studies as this would be a long post..instead let me compare the first tribute I ever did for TL with a new one.

TL Horse Tribute

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While not perfect this sculpt is a good example of me trying to follow some reference but having no idea WTF I was doing for the most part. I had a dream with this picture and it was not this...at all.

What I wanted for this picture was....

THIS:

Thinking about the fact that it took me around 7 months to get here is kind of startling but then again it I feel it shows my progress.

Most importantly this horse was sculpted WITHOUT SYMMETRY and in 3 hours. It was a scary thing for me but I kept firm and got the result I wanted. Still not exactly what I am looking for..maybe I will revisit it in 7 months.

No more base meshes, lets be real sculptors.

Understanding form , anatomy and how everything in the body has rhythm is no easy task and I can safely say that I am far from getting it. I am however at a stage where I am much more confident in my skills.

That is why everything you see below was created with THIS:

Both of the sculpts were completed in under 2 hours and I am proud to say its some of my best work to date.

And the final result of my milestones with a comparison with my first ever head.

Think of it as culmination of everything in this thread, if you told me this was my work a year ago I would have laughed and went to cry in a corner. Now I truly believe that hard work pays off and results ARE visible if you just work on it.

But you must be thinking, whatever RuN this isnt Starcraft related and we dont care ! Now away with you and your artsy crap.

AHEM SIR...

[image loading]

I could never have done this Protoss without all of the above and for that I am very happy that I took a step back and focused on something else.

And to finish it off with a bang and the most visible kind of progress....

Recognition

http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/media/fanart/?view#/fanart-0186

My Corruptor was recently inducted into the Blizzard fan art section, something that is very difficult to do. I am honored to be among such talent and still feel unworthy.

I would like to thank everyone who watches my stream on a daily basis for their support and love. You guys keep me going and I <3 you all.

And to Team Liquid, once again... you changed my life forever. Thank you so much words cannot describe how much I've gained ever since I've joined this community.

THANK YOU

-RuN

#sneaky marketing edit

if you are curious as to how this all comes to be pop in my stream someday ! I will be glad to have you http://www.twitch.tv/run__