Statuary Gardens (Figurines)

[Prime32]

Well, anime isn't as "unrealistic" as most people think. Of course, hair and clothes tend to defy gravity, but mostly it's like any other art - if the basic anatomy isn't there, it just looks bad.

If you look at the pics you posted, you'll notice that there is actually depth to the face (at least the cheeks, which is the only thing you can actually get a good depth-shot of).

But if you're going for true anime-style, why not try to incorporate the snout-face? I'm not entirely sure it's possible to do in 3D, but I don't really see how else you'd get the nose positioned right.

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http://s-wonder.jugem.jp/?eid=892

[Glass Mouse]

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http://s-wonder.jugem.jp/?eid=892

Wow, that's well done.
It's hard to see, but it seems the creator(s) just made the entire face bulge slightly below the eyes, creating the childish cheeks and the "feel" of a nose (and a tiny, tiny nose to top it off).

Still, it seems my "snout face" theory stands corrected

[IncoherentEssay]

Well, the degree of realism varies wildly from series to series, heck inbetween characters from the same series even .
For example, Higurashi no naku koro ni: compare say Keichi, Rena or any other of the nakama to Oishi (the chief of police). The first are heavily stylized whilst Oishi has much closer to realistic facial proportions.

I am aiming for the more stylized end of the spectrum mostly because i'm "maining" Touhou at the moment. Though a friend has requested some things from Ghost in the Shell, and Strike Witches (of all things ).
But i figure it's better to get one thing down to perfection* first before moving on to diversify.
I'll try layering more mass to the chin and cheeks to achieve more defined facial features.

*as if .

Edit: and here's the 1st draft for the realistic face:

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Feels somewhat off, and google likes to throw the weirdest pics at you when looking for reference for something simple .

[Domochevsky]

Looks fairly decent as is actually. (the areas below the cheek bones could use more mass though. He looks pretty hollow-faced)

[Glass Mouse]

Really nice! I see you didn't need my sketch at all

As for what's "off" on the face, I see two things.
One: the eyes aren't perfectly symmetrical. This in itself can be enough to make an entire face weird.
Two: More forehead. I don't know if you're leaving space for hair, but eyes should be in the middle of a face (in height, obviously).

Again, though: Really good. This makes me want to take up modelling - there's so much to learn that I could use in my drawing.

[Fri]

You know what you should make if you want to practice face and sandpapering?

Yukkuris. Lots of them.

[Zefir]

Also, CHA-CHA-CHALLENGE time (theme being food):

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"Everybody was Cook-Fu fighting..."

"Those meals were fast as lightning..."

"In fact it was a little bit frightning..."

"But they cooked with expert timing..."



Not food related, but it's not like all of them have to be right? So a hoplite:


Counting in either Kamina or Hakumen, that makes the weekly quota. Kinda early, but thats what happens when inspiration strikes .
Had a bit of trouble balancing the second dude, so i forgot the cube. It's about as tall as the first.

Wow this things are kinde of awsome. Is the last one a reverence to Phanteon fro LoL(Leaague of Legen)?

[Prime32]

You know what you should make if you want to practice face and sandpapering?

Yukkuris. Lots of them.

How is that going to result in more realistic faces?

Also: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=widNlzbh8hA

[Fri]

I want one nooooow

[IncoherentEssay]

Sorry about the lateness, forgot how busy wednesdays could get .
Should have made the fig on monday and painted yesterday, in hindsight.
Still, here it is:

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Aya Shameimaru, based on her appearance in Scarlet Weather Rhapsody (5th pic down).
I hate her hat, there's no clear picture of it for reference. So i just made it a pyramid.

It also shows why i have a tendency to leave heads a bit short. It's much easier to make a hat/helmet and place it on an even surface than it is to make enough space inside it to accomodate a normal head. Some thin hats would be pretty much impossible to get to look right that way, due to the material's minimum thickness.

Still, i think it went rather well. The double-white-spot in the eyes worked nicely and the general shape is better. Just needs more polish and maybe some highlights. Thy opinions?

@Zefir: Nope, not a reference. Just a generic spartan hoplite (it's the spartan shield emblem). Both of them draw from the same source material, thats all.

Yukkuri, huh? The idea does have merit, it would still provide eye practice and could be used to experiment with different expressions. Even if it is worthless for practicing head shape and facial features.
Wouldn't use up too much materials either, and could make a spiffy (if bizarre) necklace when enough Yukkuri are accumulated .
Though i'll probably pass on sandpapering for now. Even 1mm is quite noticable on this scale, especially with high-detail sections.

[Fri]

I still say you should try it. As I said, it didn't even take 1 mm. That's why I recommended yukkuri. There won't be actuall downside if you try it on simple shapes like yukkuri. Right?

[IncoherentEssay]

D'oh, me and my memory . Should've checked.
Still, point made. I'll try it out when i can get sufficiently fine-grained sandpaper. Probably make a Yukkureimu tomorrow so i have one at the ready.

Edit: since this isn't all that long of a post, i'll tack on the CHALLENGE update to it:

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Up first, the adjusted RealFace:

Up next, a jumptrooper:

Third, a gnome mage on a good ol' fashioned flying carpet:

Fourth, a young drake mid-flight:

Fifth, a feral vampire:

Ran out of nifty ideas, so i'll call Cirno/Aya as the sixth entry. A bit lackluster of an update.

Also, yukkuri made and sandpaper acquired. It'll have to wait until i'm done with the main fig, though.

[IncoherentEssay]

Right, next main figurine going up:

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The character is Kurodani Yamame from Touhou. I'm not happy with how the face turned out, it's ... pudgy? Sort of 'bloated'. Since there was no "U R DOIN IT RONG" feedback from the bust earlier, i went for something similar but apparently overdid it.
Anything else 'off' about it? Providing a solution isn't as important here as is identifying the shortfalls.
It's up to me to fix those afterall .
Feedback in general is also quite welcome .

Yukkureimu is still sitting around unpainted. Meant to paint it today but the main and some other stuff took up more time than i thought.

Also working on Mecha-Utsuho sketch #2. Since i plan to make it modular, it's mostly separated parts. I'll put those up alongside this weeks CHALLENGE update around friday or so.

[Domochevsky]

Hm... on first look i'm thinking that the face needs to be thinner (straighter edges left and right mayhaps) and the cheeks less protruded. What worked on your male bust doesn't quite work on a female anime character.

Alternatively: Did you try starting out with the face being completely flat/half-rounded and then edging eyes and mouth into it? Make the face "smoother" overall and maybe deemphasize the eyes. (Too bulgey right now. The pupils are pretty good though.)

[IncoherentEssay]

I make the head by starting with a generally round piece that i elongate to get the chin. The eyes and the mouth are pressed into the face with the sculpt tool. Maybe i should press the eyes a bit deeper then?
Starting out with a more egg-shaped piece (though not as pointy at the chin) might help with the head's shape as well...
I did whittle away most of the excess bloat, but the paint job is now (quite naturally) all sorts of messed up. I'll add in a few pics of it if i get the paint fixed up. Currently looks rather 'hewn with an axe'.

Though about the 2nd bust: the character is supposed to be female, so what about it makes it seem male? Is the face too angular? Or does the ribbon covering the chest area make it seem male? Something else altogether?
As this is a pretty serious mess-up on my end if a female character looks male .

Also, Yukkuri:

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Yukkuri are a Touhou meme, so if this baffles you don't worry. That's the normal reaction .

The big time-sink on the sculpting-side were the side hair-bangles, they took about 5 tries and still look a bit too large IMO. The white embroidery was also a bit of a pain to paint.
I can't quite decide if it looks happy or smug, though .

[Fri]

Yukkuri!

It looks great, though the smile should be wider :D

does it give you any help on for future face sculpting though?

[IncoherentEssay]

Some. Useless for the general head shape, but a less work-intensive way to try out different approaches to eyes and expressions.
This one in particular gave a pretty good idea of how to make a smug smile (essential for something down the line) and provoked a bit of thought into how to make ribbons better,
the first experimentations of that being with Yamame.
So it has it's uses.

Edit: random Yukkuri-related anecdote: i always hear "Yukkuri-Fusion" in the place of "Nuclear Fusion" in the Hisoutensoku-Mecha animation. Someone seriously needs to do a visual pun based on that.

[Prime32]

Edit: random Yukkuri-related anecdote: i always hear "Yukkuri-Fusion" in the place of "Nuclear Fusion" in the Hisoutensoku-Mecha animation. Someone seriously needs to do a visual pun based on that.

I'm not the only one?

[Domochevsky]

Wha... oh, i didn't even see your second bust. I meant the first one as male looking. >_>

(The biggest difference between male/female is the chin-line, really. Focusing on that should help quite a bit.)

[littlebottom]

i.... you.... they.... it.... um....errr.... WHY CANT I DO THIS?!

seriously, just looked through the entire thread, and its great. i would really like to be able to do something like this with any real competence, but the best i ever made out of plastercene/clay etc. was a slug... with eyes and a mouth and teeth and a tongue! it wasnt just a slab of clay, but thats it... that was it. i made it so long ago, that it has fallen apart several times i think its eye stalks fell off too.. ill have to look and see if i havnt thrown it out at some point and take a picture of it to show you the extent of my skills. and you will see why im jelous.

[Fri]

I somehow missed the aya one. I think it's actually the best one, head-wise. I guess it's because it's bigger, so you can work with it more?

Hm, do you sketch/draw before you sculpt? Maybe training yourself by drawing faces in anime style might help you sculpt anime head better, dunno. Just a random suggestion.

[IncoherentEssay]

@littlebottom: I know all too well that feeling. I get it when i see a beautifully drawn landscape/epic battlefield, essentially anything vast in scale. Suuure i could sculpt the Battle for Helm's Deep, just give me ~1-2 years, and a football stadium to build it on . Limits of the medium.
It's a matter of practice, loads of it. I still have a few *horrible* works from about 8-9 years back stuffed somewhere. Would be drowning in them infact, had i made them from clay. As a rough estimate, permanent works comprise less than 1% of 'finished' works, the rest have been temporary.

@Fri: Maybe it was like this:
*subconscious*: "It's that damnable paparazzi again? If i ignore her she'll go away!"
There is a reason though why the thread says figurines instead of art in general: i suck at drawing. Or more specifically, i can draw maps and existing objects. It's transferring more complex ideas onto paper where it all goes horribly, horribly wrong .
Besides, i don't think most people who draw anime think all that hard about how it would transfer to actual 3D. So "how to draw" guides to anime won't likely be all that helpful. Analyzing existing 'pro' figurines is probably my best source on the facial features issue. At least the eyes are starting to look ok, right?

And it's CHALLENGE time (this weeks theme being anthropomorphic personifications):

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Chaos.

Hunger.

Knowledge.
At this point it became apparent that the lack of colour severely hampers my ability to work with the theme, since it's a bit hard to connect something to winter when you can't make it white/blue. For example, Knowledge would have text on the scrolls, the candles would be lit and the quills-for-fingers would have ink dripping from the end.
So, switching gears:

Hunting = a Gentleman's Sport.
Boxing = a Gentleman's Sport.
Obvious combination is obvious. Sadly impossible in Fallout:NV despite the existence of both giant scorpoins AND boxing gloves, damnable damage reduction...

And a duel.
With either Yamame or Yukkureimu, that makes the quota quite handily, even if the hunting/duel only count as one each.

Mech parts here, since it's not a completed work (thus not a CHALLENGE entry):

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A bit more ornate than the first draft, maybe even overtly so. Currently the plating on the torso clashes a bit with the arm and the leg, so ill have to fiddle with it a bit more. Also not in 1:1 scale to one another.
Note that the limbs are for a 'generic' Mk VI Hellraven mech, Mecha-Okuu will have the appropriate customisations in place.

[Prime32]

A bit more ornate than the first draft, maybe even overtly so. Currently the plating on the torso clashes a bit with the arm and the leg, so ill have to fiddle with it a bit more. Also not in 1:1 scale to one another.
Note that the limbs are for a 'generic' Mk VI Hellraven mech, Mecha-Okuu will have the appropriate customisations in place.

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http://danbooru.donmai.us/post/show/...mecha-mecha_mu
http://forums.3dtotal.com/showthread.php?t=64604
http://danbooru.donmai.us/post/index?tags=mechanization

[IncoherentEssay]

Well, i did mean ornate more in the sense of "Sorry, can't lift my arm above shoulder level. Pauldrons, you see." . The current torso design does limit the range of arm movements.
Whilst most mecha designs do have tons of glowy seams and segmented armour and the like, they tend to have a reasonably mobile design and sleek silhuotte. Though exceptions are bound to exist, and i'll admit that my familiarity with mecha series is limited.

So, CHALLENGE update is go(theme: Morbid):

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If Cat = Cute, then 1,5xCat = 1,5xCute? (there's also a stupid pun here, would be more obvious with colour):

Gravedigging's a good job. Guaranteed to never go home hungry:

And another pun, based on the theme of the week. It's a sumo-wrestling bear, figure that one out :

A berserker, trying my hand at making a beard:

A high judge of the elven netherworld. Yes, it has four faces.
One to carry out it's duties, second to advise the first, third to recite the laws so they are not forgotten and the fourth to correct any mistakes the others make:

And a gnoll goddess of war (armor has a tendency to obscure gender), gnolls being a mathriarcal society. What with being physically ill-suited for riding, as well as spooking herbivores with their bestial appearance, gnolls rely on wolf-pulled chariots for cavalry elements. Hence the spear-spoked wheel:

In case anyone was wondering where the next main fig was, i hit a patch of busy followed by a patch of meh over the weekend. It's about 80% built at the moment, so i should be able to finish it today and paint it tomorrow or on sunday. Still within the originally projected 2-week timeframe . Just had an abnormally productive few weeks, i suppose.

EDIT: that last 20%? Hands and head, took a lot of time fiddling with those. Still have to do the hair, so not going to get it painted today.

[IncoherentEssay]

Finally finished the figurine:

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Moar Touhou? Yes. Hong Meiling this time. Went with a more vibrant green than decipted on the profile. Other small changes (ones made on purpose that is ) are the absence of embroidery on her vest (too obscured to paint) and the lack of socks. Hands were a hassle . Opinions?

[Domochevsky]

Mhm, the face is starting to look decent. (some angles excluded)

[Prime32]

Nice pose but what, no dragon symbol on the hat? Go and write your name on a grain of rice right now!

Mhm, the face is starting to look decent. (some angles excluded)

I think he's already surpassed ZUN there. Could use slightly more bulge in the forehead, and make the jawline a bit sharper (ie. the chin should be lower than where the jaw meets the neck).

Do you have a DA account?

[IncoherentEssay]

Surpassing ZUN in drawing is hardly an accomplishment and i don't think he has ever sculpted anything . Can't begrudge him for hiding the hands though, i wish i could do that at times .
And sometimes i curse at character design elements that would probably be a breeze to draw but are agonizing to sculpt, ribbons and frills being the main offenders.

So it's the jaw-chin-neck area that is most in need of adjustment then? Making it more defined and fixing the chin-base-of-neck elevation issues would likely fix most of it, maybe.

Nope, no DA account, mostly because the A&C subforum was already available when i though about putting stuff up on the net. And venturing onto dedicated art sites is a bit daunting, especially since i have heavy lurker tendencies*. Any particular benefit in it?

*membership in a total of 3 forums of which i'm on GitP more active than on the two others in total .

[Glass Mouse]

So it's the jaw-chin-neck area that is most in need of adjustment then? Making it more defined and fixing the chin-base-of-neck elevation issues would likely fix most of it, maybe.

Jep, probably.

I still think it needs more forehead. Especially if you're going for the cutesy anime-look.

Still, the face is definitely looking better. The nose (and snoutface-ish look) is a nice development.

Also, very dynamic pose! I like.
The way you've done her top and her hat are nice, too. Oh, and the hair loopies.

I can't help but wonder, though... where's 80% of the hair?

[IncoherentEssay]

Right, the slightly delayed CHALLENGE update is now going up(no theme was given this week):

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Vigilante or Villain? Not inclined to go ask before he puts away the knives.

"HELIOPOLIS-armstech. When you absolutely, positively need to drop that rogue combat 'borg from a safe distance, accept no substitute"

And now for something a bit different, a skirmish scene between dwarves and trolls:



With a closer look at the participants:



With 7 unique figurines (the halberdier dwarves are practically duplicates) that concludes the CHALLENGE this time.

On the hair: it's one of the trickier things to do. Main pitfalls are having it look like an octopus, having it break off at the middle and the extra bulk that builds up at the attachment point on the head.
Also, even if it is kept relatively short as i did with Meiling (only ~25% shorter than her in-game Hisoutensoku sprite has btw ) it still needs to stick to the shoulder or be otherwise propped up. In Hakumen's case there's a wire running the entire lenght of the longest strand, to which the other strands cling to.
Wildly flowing hair would require a wire for each individual clump of hair. Doesn't mean i won't try my hand at it some point, but it'll have to wait a bit.

The loopies are pretty much the only durable pattern for hair bangles at this scale, consisting of two lines twisted around each other and squished together at the top and the ribbon.
Meiling's actual bangles would have four parts by my estimate:two form a loop that the other two go through, alternate, rinse and repeat. Unless there's another way to create the beaded look? Not really a hair expert.