I sculpted for over 500 hours... in Blender

I have sculpted for over 500 hours so where can 500 Plus hours of sculpting get you if I could do it all over again what advice would I give myself if you're a beginner trying to get into character sculpts it's pretty natural that you dive into this topic with excitement and then before you know it you hit a wall feeling lost and overwhelmed not knowing how to proceed if this isn't you then congrats if not welcome abort because this is how it went for me 2013 and 2018 I went to two different VFX schools with a passion for film making and VFX we covered a lot of topics from film making to 2D Motion Graphics and even devil in sculpting in zbrush so somewhere in some hard drive that is probably corrupted is a scuffed sculpt of Tom Holland Spider-Man that took one whole module to finish and was probably my first character sculpt ever during my time as a student I started developing a love for 3D and managed to get decent at heart service modeling in Maya and my love for cinematography definitely benefited the look development aspect of my Works in 2018 I debled with blender for the very first time and despite only learning the basics I was able to get results I felt were not too bad then I went on a Hiatus for 2 years 2018 and 2020 I served national service and completely lost touch with 3D I also double into music production so not having a lot of free time I decided to focus on producing the beach Mouse beach beach Mouse so that's literally 2 years of completely not touching any 3D related softwares early 2020 I started a YouTube channel where I would make an art piece for every song that I put out mid 2020 was when I decided to pick up blender again and did the 2019 donut tutorial in this music video I did for a maple story cover this character you're looking at is the first character I've ever created in blender however it wasn't a sculpt but rather a Frankenstein of poly modeling assets and probably some sculpting for the fs of the clothes this character took over 2 weeks to complete and it ended up looking like this so naturally I ditched the idea of creating characters the second hint of me attempting to get back in a character creation was in February 202 one where I had the idea of creating 2D characters over 3D backgrounds at the time I did studies without any clear intent just purely observation and was very stubborn on developing my own style it was around March 2021 when I decided to combine everything that I've been doing and start a series create a 2d character based on streamers over a 3D background for every song that I put out all of that eventually led to [Applause] [Music] this this was at the time the most successful content that I put out ever but ironically was the last of the series why because I was burnt out Not only was it too much work for very little return but I was just not content with the artistic Direction I was heading towards keep in mind this music/ Art Channel was never monetized because the numbers were too low and it never met the criteria so that was the end of the whole music and art Series in my free time I continued working on improving my 3D skills took part in the alternate realities challenge Etc July 2021 was when I decided to work on an extremely ambitious project create an original song and a music video with original characters in it it's like I refuse to learn this was my third attempt to get back in a character creation so this character Jerry was the first character I've ever sculpted in blender I honestly thought that the Textures hair grooming and rig turned out great but if you isolate the bass mesh the lack of character fundamentals was suddenly very evident before I went too deep into the whole world development rabbit hole I snapped out of it and realized that it was too ambitious of a project for again too little return still did the song though but it was a simple music video with a car and was rendered entirely an Eevee so I was like okay let's stop with the whole character thing now and let's focus on putting out cute my fourth attempt to get back in a character creation was in February 2022 where I took an interest in chibi characters a few fan arts of streamers and video games later it gradually evolved from chibies to whatever style you wish to call this and then surprise surprise another Breaking Point what I had intended to be a stylized version of Henry kavl playing as SOA from valerant ended up looking like a neander tall variant From Another Universe this was probably the biggest slump I have faced as an artist and to be honest I had a bit of an identity crisis a page from my journal literally reads from 6th April 2022 I'm stressed by the speed of my growth as disn and I also said to be honest my motivation is at an all-time low and I do in fact feel like giving up that's that's crazy to me that I actually wrote that so naturally I took a break but this break was probably the one I needed the most as it was the initial spark at the turning point of my art Journey it was during this time where I consumed and got really inspired by gibl movies The Works of poopy cat and Luca I made the hard decision to let go of the Alias that I grew very attached to and came up with a new Alias that we now know as Tiny Noy my fifth attempt to get back in a character creation was in July 2022 when I created this fan art of Poopy Cats work in fact I wrote her an email asking for permission to post them on my socials obviously I'm going to show you the actual content of the email but I didn't just leave with a yes she also left me with some very kind and encouraging words and you could imagine how gratifying it was to hear them from an artist who you look up to so all this new found motivation LED this series of works that went on for about 7 months until this very sculpt where I stepped out of my comfort zone and went for a more real life proportion this was when I realized how much I needed to rely on references nothing wrong with having references but I just knew that I wanted to improve on my anatomy knowledge which was why I did this I'm about to sculpt 100 hits in blender I journal every single day of my was s an enemy got by the end of this challenge no but the Improvement was a sign of hope that this could actually lead to something great after the challenge I played around with a few different styles had a little pause on a journey to work on Tiny eye 1.3 then I dropped this video where I turned one of your OC's in 3D while I was working on this video I was also taking up courses on Anatomy to expand my knowledge Beyond just heads and also I was brainstorming ways to not only break the news to you guys but to find ways to monetize this journey I mean your boy got to Eat Right speaking of eating I just want to take a quick moment to thank my patrons for their support and a quick shout out to the sponsor tier members of the patreon fox the king Ruby Lux and Jason Cuthbertson so you'll have to wait and see what's coming up next in this channel but here's what I can tell you I plan to start streaming on Twitch sometime in July so having this goal of streaming by mid 2024 I wanted to at least get to a level where it's tolerable to see me sculpt life and also I wanted to iron out some kinks in my workflow I had the idea of turning out portraits while doing just that but it would be a little abrupt from The Works that have been posting so far so I broke the news before starting this series of sculp sheets these are great because they're quick to iterate and they help me identify my weak points quickly and sculpt after sculpt I do feel that I'm improving here's a sculpt of ton I did on day one of the 100 hit challenge here's the sculpt on the last day of the challenge and here is where we're at now all right we're all caught up here's what I've learned from the 500 Plus hours of sculpting what I'm going to do first is to get the technical tips and tricks out of the way and then I'll give some art advice that I feel I would have benefited from when I was a beginner okay technical tips and tricks here's what I use to sculpt I use a welcome pen tablet and a pen has two buttons this is assigned to the middle Mouse button and this is assigned to the right Mouse button I hold my pen like this and my thumb goes over the middle Mouse button so if I want to orbit around the viewport I just go like this and if I need to right click I just go like this brushes here are all the ones that I use alongside their shortcut keys pause the video if you need to to assign a custom short shortcut key just right click on any one of the brushes or settings assign shortcut then type in your desired key bind viewport tips be sure to use a higher focal length in your viewport when sculpting I personally use 85 mm and wouldn't go below it I've seen artists go beyond 100 mm this may be a hot take but once in a while I would hop in orthographic view to check the silhouette of my sculps if you have cavity turned on use World screen emphasizes on fine details such as the edges and can distract you from producing clean forms matcat Basic 2 is the one that I use the most while sculpting some other ones that I use are mat cap basic 1 and Studio basic flat is useful for observing the color and value of your textures without the influence of light but you could also do that in a material preview by previewing the textures directly speaking of material preview here are some EV tips if you didn't already know the material preview uses Eevee it comes pre-installed with a few hdri options my favorite option at the moment is sunset but it doesn't hurt to have a few other options you can preview custom hdis and light sources in the material preview by checking scene world and scene lights just make sure to turn on contact Shadows under the light settings FYI this setting is only accessible in EV if you want to use a custom hdri with a solid background just follow this setup under color management I use agx the improved version of filmic it has the ability to handle highly exposed colors to mimic film's natural response to light I would recommend at least using medium high contrast me personally I usually go for high or very high contrast the reason why I avoid using base cont contrast is because the contrast is a lot closer to the likes of a lock profile which may potentially result in overcompensating of colors and values of materials sadly I couldn't find any manual to back up this claim but just imagine trying to guess the color and value of this red box in a lock profile as compared to guessing them after a Rec 709 conversion then when you're done and you wish to color grade in post turn it back to base contrast before exporting your image but this works for my workflow so if your settings don't align with mine and it still works for you that's completely completely fine just stick with it make sure that ambient occlusion is turned on and know that the factor goes beyond one I like it at four for character sculpts play around with the distance too but I usually leave it at the default value at 0.2 Turn on screen space Reflections and refractions all right now for some art advice and pointers that I would give myself if I could do this all over again keep in mind that everyone has their own ways of learning and these advice are coming from a self-proclaimed intermediate artist I may change my mind on these advice in the future so you have been warned in the com context of learning art fundamentals are deceptively intertwined now what do I mean by that here are all the art fundamentals that I could find now let's take a look at this Portrait by poopy cat which of the many art fundamentals do you think is required to achieve this portrait in my opinion I think to be at this level I'm going to say that you'll need a tiny bit of anatomy knowledge a good understanding of color theory and value shapes forms lighting lines proportions and texture so if that's actually the case it's safe to say that a course on an Anatomy or color theory alone isn't necessarily going to get you here right it requires not only hours of practice but a few other fundamentals that are easy to overlook now let's assume that each of these art fundamentals are in-game abilities and there's a wide range of classes to pick from right now you're a beginner and your class is a digital character sculptor and for each class we have three advancements beginner intermediate and advanced and let's assume that in order to advance you have to acquire certain abilities and have them be at a certain level however different classes comprise of different abilities now let's just say that you've worked really hard and managed to advance to an intermediate digital character sculptor but along the way you've decided to change classes and you now want to become a 2d character artist that works with traditional media the great news is if both classes share the same abilities you won't have to learn them again but with all the new abilities that you have to learn and level up you shouldn't be surprised if your fundamentals suddenly don't translate after all you're technically now considered a beginner 2D character artist right so in a grand scheme of things art fundamentals intertwined to produce beautiful art pieces like these but it's a very different story when it comes to learning them which brings me to my second point in the large pool of art fundamentals learn to accept being terrible all over again we need to set realistic expectations and treat each fundamental as if they are different subjects because they are to some of you this may sound very obvious but I had the expectation that if I could do this this this and this I would be able to do this in no time not true at all when you're already decent at something and you decide to challenge yourself with a new subject for instance you're good at Line work but you suddenly suck at shading it's so easy to think maybe I was just not made for this whereas in reality maybe you're just not ready to digest a new topic or you just got to push through and learn to be okay with sucking all over again Embrace being a beginner now Point number three if I could do it all over again which fundamentals would i f focus on as a beginner so considering that we intend to create characters we should focus on character fundamentals that are transferable in all mediums assuming that these are the abilities required to become a digital character sculptor my recommended build for a beginner in chronological order is forms shapes proportions Anatomy yes they all come in hand in hand and are all equally important to learn but prioritizing certain abilities can lead to more effective growth okay but something's missing to even cast abilities you'll need a weapon a AKA your tools if you can't even delete a cube or add a sphere how would you even think of turning it into a head right you don't need to know every single tool in your software of choice just aim to be comfortable enough to navigate your way around before exploring the world complete the tutorial Island first once you're done with that it's time to focus on shapes forms and proportions let's begin with shapes and forms shapes are the external form or the silhouette of something based on this silhouette we all know that this is a circle now if we were to add volume to this circle we now recognize this as a sphere that volume is what we call form so why are forms such a high priority the thing is shapes and proportions are more subjective and open for interpretation but forms not as much forms will tell you whether something is inflated concaved bumpy or smooth and bad forms can destroy a sculpt let me demonstrate the importance of good forms here's an old sculpt of mind that was done back in 2022 I'm going to ignore all the painfully obvious anatomical error ER and only fix the forms here it is with bad forms and good forms I don't know about you but this now to me feels more like a stylistic choice than a bad practice session of course if we address the anatomical issues it'll look a lot better but even anatomically more accurate proportions can't save you from all the bumpy goodness in this context I think what causes bad forms besides the lack of practice is uncertainty usually due to the lack of understanding of what's beneath the skin yes Anatomy but let's put that on hold for now so what can we do to level up our ability to do forms one we can do exercises such as turning a cube into a sphere two explore simple organic shapes such as a bean or a stylized Rock and make sure you do everything you can to get rid of bumpy forms and three look at your sculpts in different angles and observe the Contours and silhouette since we're sculpting in 3D it's really important that our sculpt looks good in as many angles as possible you can observe the Contours by making use of the Shadows highlight lights and even the polygon edges next up proportions proportions are the relationship between parts of a hole in this context I'm talking about two things one measurements using relative skill to measure parts of the body and two understanding that size is all relative let's first talk about measurements a common trick that artists use is the head-to body ratio where they would use the head to figure out the proportions of the body the eight heads Cannon is the ideal standard for adults but an average adult is usually around 7.5 hits tall I for you to check out this video by Yen sculps where you can watch him apply this method I want to remind you that proportions vary from person to person so just use this method as a guide but make sure to adjust according to your references also you might want to check out this free human proportions calculator by Anatomy for sculptors secondly size is all relative take a look at this rock the size of it is huge right it's like a little Cliff now if you scale up everything but the rock it becomes a tiny rock that you could just kick around keep in mind that the shape of the rock did not change one bit don't confuse use size with shapes this may seem so obvious right now but let's explore this concept on characters now it's fair to assume that this character has huge eyes right but is it because she has tall rounded eyes well let's scale up the other features but the eyes oh now they look normal so no it's not because she has tall rounded eyes tall and rounded is just the description of the shape of her eyes so the reason why her eyes appear huge is because of their size relative to the other features AKA proportions so so the next time you do your studies especially on stylized characters remember that size is all relative and don't confuse size with shapes now let's talk about learning anatomy anatomy is such a complex and extensive topic which even I am still figuring out but let's just narrow down and talk about the areas I feel beginners should tackle first personally I would start with the skull and bony landmarks bony landmarks are the specific points on the skeleton that are most prominent and easily identifiable Under the Skin they are great point of references to ensure correct proportions and shapes one thing I could have done more often during the 100 hit challenge would be to study the Bony landmarks and cross reference the shapes and forms of the skull remove all the quote unquote accessories of the head and you'll soon notice that the top half of our head and the outline of our jaw mostly comprise of bony landmarks it's an area where I think beginner mistakes are the most apparent especially at the ey socket region we have been blessed with this free skull that comes with the human base meshes bundle by blender studio so take that to your advantage lower the level of detail and turn off auto smooth smooth observe the shapes forms and all the plain changes that takes place of course studying the skull alone isn't enough the next task would then be to understand the relationship between bony areas and the rest of the face such as the fat Pats facial muscles and tissues honestly a lot of that can be done by eyeballing the shapes and forms of references while keeping in mind of the Bony landmarks something I like to do is to set imaginary point a and point B then just fill in the blanks but as soon as you have the capacity to learn the anatomy of different groups of of the face you should do so speaking of imaginary Point A's and point B's a less imaginary equivalent of that are Origins and insertions of muscles identifying where key muscles originate from and where they insert to will go a long way not only does it make failling the blanks easier but it helps you with guessing the motion of muscles an additional tip about memorizing Anatomy is to associate them with something memorable for instance the clavicles are shaped like a Hunter bow or the term supin can be associated with soup as in a waiter holding up a bowl of soup the pinky finger is used to make the ultimate promise therefore it's where the Anna is the thumb is is the gesture really good therefore it's where the radius is and the list goes on don't be afraid to make up your own all right that's all the info I'm going to try to squeeze in this video I hope that by enlightening you of my little backstory you remember that your journey is unique as corny as that may sound and there's really no point in comparing yours with others I'm really excited to see how this all turns out am I going to successfully become an advanced character artist whatever that means or am I going to be so bad that I eventually change paths and start tking for money who knows if you're experienced in this field do let me know if you agree or disagree with my points in the comment section I'd really like to know and if you're thinking about starting your own Journey this is your sign I'm calling you out right now okay thank you all so much for watching and watch this video next if you want to see me turn one of your 2D characters in a 3D bye guys a [Music]

Channel: tinynocky

Views: 15,139

Keywords: blender, blender 3d, blender how to, blender 4.0, blender 4.0.1, blender 4.0.2, blender character sculpt, blender 3d character

Id: 85Vxb7Ff9zY

Length: 19min 36sec (1176 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 05 2024