Anatomy and Character Sculpture - Fundamentals of Anatomy and Digital Sculpting

30/08/2023 - 08/10/2023 / Week 1 - Week 8

Glen Owen / 0354952

Anatomy and Character Sculpture / Bachelor of Design (Hons) in Creative Media

Taylor's University

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INSTRUCTION

Fig 0.1 Module Information

Exercises

i) Skeletal studies

    In this study, the main goal is to learn of the human structure better so that we can draw our pose more logically and with the equal proportion.

Fig 1.1 Draft on skeletal studies (Week 3, 13/09/2023)

    After looking at it, I realized that perhaps the fingers are too long. Mr. Kanaan told me that instead of making the hand spread open, it should be close in a curve.

Fig 1.2 Detailed Skeletal Studies (Week 4, 20/09/2023)

ii) Head studies

    In this study, we are to learn of the head and how to sculpt it in ZBrush. Mr. Kanaan told us to do some sketches as practice first on drawing the head so I did what he told.

Fig 2.1 Sketches on head direction (Week 2, 06/09/2023)

        When I showed this, he told that it should be in digital. I didn't know about it earlier but in the end I did it digital but with less heads.

Fig 2.2 Digital Head Studies (Week 4, 20/09/2023)

    After learning on the basics, it's time for me to try sculpt it in ZBrush. I was struggling using ZBrush at first since I don't know the basics yet so I tried my best. My first attempt on making a head is kind of... hideous.

Fig 2.3 Hideous head (Week 3, 13/09/2023)

    This is just one of my experiment in testing the tools in ZBrush so I could get to know better of it. As time passes, I did better and better even though it still looks ugly.

Fig 2.5 Blockout Head (Week 4, 20/09/2023)

Fig 2.6 - Fig 2.7 Head Sculpt (Week 5, 27/09/2023)

iii) Muscle studies

    In this study, we are to learn about muscles of human body. Basically in this section, we are just learning on how the proportion works on each muscle and how they will look like when they contract or relax.

Fig 3.1 Muscle Studies (Week 8, 18/10/2023)

iv) Hands

    We are to learn about hands and their gestures in this section. At first it is overwhelming since I always struggled at drawing hands, but after looking some references and practice, I managed to learn it.

Fig 4.1 Hand Studies (Week 4, 20/09/2023)

    After learning on it's gesture, I tried making some block out with ZBrush. It's overwhelming at first since I am still new to ZBrush. I use the tutorial video that is available in Youtube and watched Mr. Kanaan's tutorial video on how to make one and I managed to sculpt it.

Fig 4.2 Initial sculpt (Week 5, 27/09/2023)

    It was very rough as it's still my first time in using ZBrush. I don't even know how it turn out like that at first but then I refined the sculpt in the end.

Fig 4.2 Hand Sculpting (Week 8, 18/10/2023)

v) Feet

    Personally I felt like this is the second hardest part since I also struggled in drawing and making feet. I tried my best by learning the structure of it and implement it into the sculpture later on.

Fig 5.1 Feet Studies (Week 5, 27/09/2023)

    It's hard at first, but after learning the base and know how the feet works it becomes easy. 

Fig 5.2 Attempt on sculpting the feet (Week 8, 18/10/2023)

vi) Face Expression

    This study is the same study that I did in Character Design so I only copy paste it here.

Fig 6.1 Face Expression (Week 6, 02/10/2023)

vii) Posture

    In this study, we are to learn about poses and more by using the knowledge we learnt from the previous exercises. We are also told that we should draw 1 character with a pose so that Mr. Kanaan can see it and know how good is our understanding in posing a character.

Fig 7.1 Drawing of Phanthylia from Honkai: Star Rail (Week 1, 30/08/2023)

Fig 7.2 Drawing of Miguel O' Hara (Week 1, 30/08/2023)

    Mr. Kanaan told me that from this drawings I made, I need to learn proportion and how to make a dynamic pose. So, I first learn the base of a human anatomy to learn their base so that I could understand more.

Fig 7.3 Posture Studies (Week 3, 13/09/2023)

    I learnt that in general, male body tend to be more boxier and bulkier while female body tend to be more curvy and flexible.

Fig 7.4 More poses (Week 4, 20/09/2023)

    Mr. Kanaan told me that I need to give more volume on the pose so that I could learn more on posture studies. Suddenly, I had a random thoughts when I am learning this bases. Instead of using human body as reference, I used a Gundam instead as experiment to learn more dynamic pose.

Fig 7.5 Poses based on Gundam Model Kit (Week 4, 20/09/2023)

    To be honest, there's no need to add the props. I added the props because I felt like it would look plain if it's just a plain pose. After all, this is just a study.

Fig 7.6 Further study of volume in poses (Week 8, 18/10/2023)

viii) ZBrush experiment

    In this last section is just me learning on how to use ZBrush and how crazy I can go while learning. I spent days on learning the basics and also tried to do some blockout testing for my project later on.

Fig 8.1 Creature making (Week 5, 27/09/2023)

Fig 8.2 Attempt on making a blank expression with a creature I made (Week 8, 18/10/2023)

Fig 8.3 Blockout of creature (Week 8, 18/10/2023)

Fig 8.4 Exercise Compilation (Week 8, 18/10/2023)

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REFLECTION

    8 weeks of doing exercise, I felt like it's a waste of time because of my poor time management. At first, I don't understand which direction I was going since this module didn't specify when to start the real project. In the end, this fundamentals only serves me on basic study of anatomy and also some basic study on how to use ZBrush. Thanks to the study of ZBrush, I can now understand how ZBrush works as I am very confident in doing my project now.