Progress.

for this project my goal was to have an old man character sculpt to be ready for use in a game engine, and through this blog you will see my progress through the character creation, and the steps i take till i reach my final outcome.

Research

Going equipped:

this is an animation made by Aardman back in the 1980's, featured a plasticine model with cartoon like head proportions but realistic in every other aspect.

War story:

another animation by Aardman from the same series, this featured an elderly man retelling his story through WW2 with a lighthearted animation accompanying it, i always loved how genuine this story was and would love to recreate the humble nature of this man through my sculpt.






Progress - Maya

to start with, i took a cylinder for the torso and lowered the subdivisions so it resembled a human torso, without being too poly intensive.

Next i cut the model in half and removed a few top faces for a neck hole, this way makes modelling easier as so long as i keep it against the same vertex i can merely mirror the finished geometry later.

i then viewed from a side angle to match up some vertex's to give a more humanly shape to the back.

next was a little more sculpting to define the ab, and bring the neck point up a bit for the collar.

here i extruded some faces to make the shoulder, the then deleted some bottom faces where the arm will join up.

this is a cylinder with 8 sides, enough to join up comfortably with the shoulder hole, also slightly shaped to resemble an arm.

the vertexes here were joined up using the merge vertex tool, luckily the topology remained quite tidy here and required minimal adjusting.

only change here is me smoothing the normals to get a better grasp of how it will look at this point if smoothed.

a reference shot of how the mesh looks when aligned to the orthographic shots i am using.

making a start on the lower body now, here two edges were bridged and curved to match the groin line.

starting the leg was rather simple, much like the arm its a matter of following the ortho views and lining the vertex's up, and adding edge loops where needed.

leg shaped and ready to join.

leg now joined, ready for feet to be added, again using the merge vertex tool.

foot made using extrusion and edge loops.

quick shot of the foot after a small bit of adjustment, giving it a more realistic fan out toward the toes.

starting on the hand, here i have extruded at the end of the arm, to shape where the thumb comes out is crucial, as it is the easiest part to get wrong, ruining the shape of the whole hand.

here the thumb is done and positioned, along with the index finger which will be copied for the rest of the fingers.

all fingers completed and vertexes merged, however at this point the geometry looks very messy, but all it requires is a vertex shift to fix.

hand mended, now this looks convincing enough to move on.

onto the final part, the head, the head was made with a box subdivided once, and then pulled to fit a rough head shape.

neck here is formed by merging vertex's, but clearly requires further adjustment.

with further edge loops added the neck shifting was successful, now all left is to mirror geometry and test if it looks good enough to sculpt on.

with the mirror being successful i will consider this good enough to move on, this will be my base mesh for the sculpting phase, having never sculpted a character before i am excited to see the outcome.







Progress - Zbrush

the mesh imported correctly, first off i adjusted a few points to give a slightly more realistic body shape for an old man.

increased subdivision levels and began to rough out a few facial features.

marking in some key areas, like cheekbones, lips, eyeholes etc, having not done this kind of thing for a long time this is taking me much longer than expected.

i found the easiest way to add eyes is to places a few spheres into the holes i made earlier, at least for now, the head is shaping up.

eyes are firmly secure, now shaping around them and bringing out the brow, also smoothed the nose, but still not happy with it.

defined the jawline more, also fleshed out a rough ear.

this step took a fair bit of time, i redid the nose completely as i simply wasnt happy with it, sculpted in an elderly haircut with a neat center parting, added more detail to the ear and sculpted in a moustache, the idea is to make him looks proud and possibly even regal.

changed the material to bring out his wrinkles and other details, also finished up details on his neck.

this next step was incredibly frustrating, mainly because i have been hindered by my PC at home, i could not extract the clothing unless i lowered the subdivided to a much lower point and built form the ground up again, i feel at this rate im going to have to seriously rethink my study proposal.

the rest of the clothes have been extracted, now to sculpt the detail onto them ready for texturing, i decided to go for traditional elderly ware, this exact set of clothes my grandfather wears regularly, in fact.

sculpting on the torso was a success, i wanted it to have a very rough woolen finish, i feel it looks a bit bare as is though, so i may add something else on top of it.

made use of the masking here to avoid the rest of the mesh getting affected.

a simple shot of the clothes without the character wearing them, to see how they follow the flow of the body.

i had to make a drastic change here, my initial plan was to texture/retopologise in exterior programs and have him ready for engine, but i simply did not have the time/access to the software at home to do so, i am incredibly dissapointed ive had to resort to other measures, but at least i am able to paint directly onto the polys.

an upclose shot of the head, i am happy with how this turned out at least, i am definately looking forward to doing more with Zbrush over the summer period, to be fully prepared to get going once Year 3 begins.






Conclusion


all in all i am very happy with the sculpting side of things, and im very pleased with how smoothly the base mesh went and i had minimal issues with it throughout its design, im raring to aim for more interesting creatures such as monsters/aliens etc to really let my imagination run, however i am deeply dissapointed i could not meet my initial goal for the study proposal, i seem to have vastly underestimated the workflow required to create a game ready character, and it definately seems my home PC requires some serious upgrades so i can work at a faster pace.