Sculpt January 2019: Day 7-13

For most of this week I felt like I was back in day 1. There are not many great pieces, I'm afraid, but it's probably to be expected. The benefits of daily work is that you produce a lot of stuff and get better quickly; the downside is, however, that not everything you make ends up looking great. (I'm still struggling with that part.)

My favourites this week are Day 8 & 13, but I'm, of course, going to show you all of the renders in proper order.

Day 7: Motion - Speed

At first I thought I'd do one of Harry Potter's broomsticks, but I realized that the intentions behind this topic were probably to make us sculpt something in motion (the hint is in the name, really). And I hadn't sculpted an animal in a while, so I gave the cheetah a go (note the subtle explanation, which is there in case you couldn't recognize what that yellow blob is).

Day 8: Beast - Jekyll & Hyde

This was one of the topics where I was scratching my head for most of the time I was supposed to be sculpting, failing to find any topic that would do. And then it turned up on my favourites list. Go figure. I actually pulled a neat trick in this scene - I sculpted a simple sheep's head, then used it as a basis for the wolf's one. And I made two renders, one of them with the mirror masked out and the wolf's head disabled for rendering. That way I could easily combine the images - in Blender's compositor. I was on fire that night, quickly figuring things out. Alas, the fire was not there to stay...

Day 9: Mood - Rage

...and it would've been so appropriate for this topic. But I'm really terrible at sculpting people. I can see in my head what it is supposed to look like, but somehow, it always ends up weird. The only thing that's improved in this one is the teeth (Remember the scary girl from last week? Yeah, hooligans apparently get better dentists.) But the mouth is still atrocious.

Day 10: Body - Beard

Aaaand another failed human being. I was going for the kind of Nordic-dwarwish style of beard (because of course I was) and it didn't go well. For one, I started too late. The initial mesh looked alright, I got the proportious better than in my previous attempts, but as I was rushing, it started to go down-hill. Sculpting hair is difficult. To make it look good, you either have to go very stylized, or super-realistic. And since I can't pull off either at the moment, it looks like a horrible blobby hybrid.

Day 11: Attribute - Liquid

Third topic in a row that I didn't enjoy. I poured over reference images, trying to find something cool that no-one else was doing. I found a few leaves that I liked, so I set out to work. My biggest mistake was to not do a transparency check early in the project. I finished the sculpting, painted the leaf, added the water material... and was greeted by half-transparent blackness. That sometimes happens if the lighting doesn't have enough transparency bounces, I thought, I can fix this. I turned on full global illumination (aka lighting on steroids) and... nothing. So I resigned myself to this awkward matcap and hoped for better luck the next day.

Day 12: Objects - Staff

Which came in the shape of a more reasonable topic. I was almost set on doing the staff from the upcoming Blender movie called Spring, but I changed my mind at the last minute (I didn't want to look like a bootlicker - one of the people involved in the project is also participating). So I chose instead a staff from my beloved Final Fantasy IX. It is the High Mage's staff, Vivi's second most powerful, and the only one I could find decent reference images for. I'm not sure if it was the subject choice, but this project went quite smoothly, even the bat wings didn't give me any trouble.

Day 13: Minimalistic - Empty

My number one for this week. Which is funny, because I was especially dreading this one (what do you sculpt for "empty", seriously?) But my muse had returned from holidays and I got this nice image delivery in my head. It was very enjoyable to work on, too. I sculpted the pig very quickly and then I thought for a while about the fragments. I almost retopologized it, but then I decided against it - it is supposed to be sculpting practice after all. So instead I used the boolean modifier to create the hole, and then another on a different copy of the piggy bank to create the fragments. Both areas needed to be re-sculpted, but in this way the fragments roughly fit the area.

And that will be all for this week. The next one is possibly going to be even more demanding, because the topics are getting progressively more... artistic. :-) See you next time!