Sculpt January 2019: Day 21-27

I can see the end of the tunnel. Wooo! (In all seriousness, though, I thought I would be more tired than I am. Maybe the almost-two-years of weekly practice had some benefits after all.)

Day 21: Motion - Pressure

I had a few ideas for this one, but all of them too difficult to make in the given timeframe. So I decided I wanted to do some slightly stylised motion and I created the puff of smoke. It was surprisingly a lot of fun to make and seemed to shape itself under the tip of my stylus. The kettle was much more stubborn, and, as a punishment, ended up all wobbly. (Both pieces were created from a subdivided cube, because... practice.) Oh, and I started using a different matcap. The most common red one is not really working for me. It happens way too often that I make a sculpt I'm happy with, only to find all sorts of bumps once I switch to a regular material. This light matcap seems to be doing a much better job highlighting these issues in time.

Day 22: Beast - Jungle

This was probably my quickest sculpt so far, so it is absolutely hilarious that it ended up being the most popular in the Facebook group. Seriously, it's just a fancy curve that was attacked by a textured brush. Took me an hour or so. Maybe if I start mashing up things really quickly I'll become the most recognized artist in the universe. Or not. (My money is on the "or not". But it's still funny to see how unpredictable "fame" is.)

Day 23: Mood - Insanity

I was struggling with this one. I didn't feel like doing a generic madman (although I made a few google searches in that direction) so I eventually settled on the Cheshire Cat. This particular one is inspired by the PC game 'Alice: Madness Returns', which I haven't played, but found intriguing. I found the head easier to make than in my previous attempts, so maybe I have learnt something this month. I'm also fairly happy with the teeth—at this rate it will soon be one nemesis down, five hundred and thirty-four more to go.

Day 24: Body - Fat

I was almost set on sculpting a sumo wrestler when this image appeared in my head. And because I've learnt to trust my creative particles, I went for it. Didn't turn out *quite* as well as I wanted (especially the dog's face), but I'm not really complaining. I was rushing as usual, so it could've ended a lot worse. What I do like is the lighting. I wasn't planning for it to look like this—I'm starting with the same three-point light setup every day, and I adjust it, but the default one here looks really good, so I kept it.

Day 25: Attribute - Healing

Meh. I'd love to say that I didn't half-ass this one, but I did. I couldn't find anything I wanted to make, so I panicked, of course, and made just a simple scene of random spa/wellness things. I had a few towels sculpted at one point, but they were so hopelessly rubbish that I deleted them.

Day 26: Objects - Ornaments

I had high hopes for this one, and at the end I'm not sure how I feel about it. The original concept (Celtic "tree of life") looked much cooler, so I think it has to do with colour choices. It seemed alright when I was rendering it, but the more I look at it the less I like it. The nice part about this one is that I played a bit more with the silver material and I used noise to simulate imperfections. That turned out quite well, I think. From the sculpting point of view, I did a couple of new things here. On the outer ring I used radial symmetry (which, as it turns out, is super-laggy when you combine it with Multires and a smooth brush). And I modelled the back plate and let the sculpted ornaments protrude through it. That way I didn't have to worry about poking holes in the sculpted mesh.

Day 27: Minimalistic - Delicate

I wanted to do something really minimalistic for once, so I only sculpted the snowdrop and the dirt (which you can barely see). But I couldn't resist putting it into some sort of a scene, so I introduced the glass cover—which should also ideally strenghten the "delicate" aspect of it. I think I messed up the post processing on this one, though. I'm just not sure if I went too far, or not far enough. But overall it's a bit underwhelming for my taste.

And that's all for today, folks. Next week will be the last one in the SculptJanuary series and after that? Who knows. (Well, I should, but I'm not telling.)