Sculpt January 2019: Day 28-31

And that's the end of it all. I've managed to create all 31 sculptures and I don't feel particularly tired. Maybe I've died and haven't realised yet?

Well, if I did I wish I could have ended with better pieces than those I'm about to show you. Alas, it was not meant to be. I didn't stop trying, quite the contrary. Maybe I picked concepts that were too ambitious, or I just didn't have enough time to polish them like I wanted. Either way, the last four renders are a bit on the rubbish side.

Day 28: Motion - Smooth

At first I thought I'd do an ice skater gliding gracefully on an ice rink. I'm glad I didn't, because I was struggling more than enough with this considerably smaller scene. I think I'm starting to develop a creative block concerning hands. Which is odd, because I used to be quite comfortable sculpting them. Maybe it's the poses. I used rigged fingers again, but once I blobbed everything together and started polishing, it fell apart. And I can't do thumbs. And nails. I probably don't go to low enough resolution, but still, they shouldn't look like a horrible finger disease.

Day 29: Beast - Harpy

I was both looking forward to this one and dreading it. I wanted to sculpt a harpy from Guild Wars 2, but a quick look at reference images told me that there was no way I could manage that in 3 hours. So I went for my own design. Without symmetry. I don't know what I had banged my head on that day, but it must have been a really good one. I was struggling and rushing and then struggling some more. As a result, her face looks like a cubist masterpiece. Hopefully not from this angle, but heavens forbid you wanted to rotate the scene. I also didn't have time to make proper wings, so she ended up looking more like a plucked chicken than a terrifying harpy.

Day 30: Mood - Pride

Probably the best of the four. And it was a fairly quick sculpt, too. (This is so unfair.) Now that I'm looking at it again, I might have exaggerated the puffed out chest even more, but hey, at least it's somewhat recognizable as pride. The feathers are atrocious again, but I tried, I swear. I was hoping to avoid sculpting one feather and duplicate it along the body, because that would've been a real pain. The one thing I like about this, though, is the background. I got a bit adventurous with the gradients and I stumbled upon a colour/shape combination that worked for me.

Day 31: Body - Extreme expression

I felt a bit under pressure to come up with something magnificent to end the series. So this is it. The magnificent me, pulling a face after finishing all 31 sculptures. (I wasn't referencing my own picture, though. I found a beautiful lady making this silly face and I wanted to capture it as faithfully as I could. Or couldn't.)

Anyway, no more crying over mediocre renders. There are new weeks to come, new renders to conquer. And I can finally tell you what I've cooked up in the dark parts of my brain. I'd like to keep the momentum of creating one thing every day, but I also like the idea of a proper scene. Plus, I'd like to make it more playful and bring back some of my storytelling. So I'll do an experiment. I'll use a random noun generator to pick 5 words. Then I'll create a complete piece for each word. On Saturday, I'll bring all of that together, and on Sunday I'll rest panic because I haven't properly finished any of the items and I'm running out of time.

Should be fun.

See you next week!