I suck at sculpting heads, so I did it 100 times

I'm about to sculpt 100 hits in blender I journal every single day of my journey so you'll get to hear the thoughts of an artist who all his life has been running away from Anatomy by the end of this video we'll find out how much I improve or if I even improve at all I want to First acknowledge Ahmad aldori's 100 hits in 10 days challenge that already exists in the 2D art community but if you think I'm gonna finish this in 10 days then congratulations we shared the same toxic trait anyway this is a character that I did two years ago and was probably the first character that I ever sculpted from scratch in blender only last year I decided to actually start making character-centric art pieces and later that year tiny Noki was born I started making more and more characters and started seeing some improvement but there was one thing I avoided like the plague Anatomy yeah so for the longest time I managed to get away with it solely by observing the shapes and planes and also by covering up the flaws with hair and accessories not the best before I begin a challenge I needed a goal I didn't exactly know where to start but I know that whenever I sculpt hits I'm always second guessing myself so I know that down some weak points that I felt I needed to address and without further Ado let's begin a challenge day one the test my current skill level I've decided to sculpt three heads with soft and feminine features I believe they're arguably the hardest to sculpt so I knew this would make a good before and after so for the first head I freestyle the female head without any reference at all to the best of my abilities ah I know it's not the the most Pleasant sight to see just for good measure here's what it looks like without the hair before I move on to the second hit I wanted to take a step back and do some reflection so here's a clip of me reflecting so after looking at some references I feel that my weak point is pretty much the entire face but if I had the nitpick it would be the eyelids or in general the placement of the orbital muscles and fat I was trying to go for double eyelids but I ended up with this triple eyelids thing I know that there's some form of fat that is supposed to be here but off the top of my head this was the best that I could do also the nose is something that I'm super weak at I don't quite know the anatomy of a nose I wasn't confident enough to sculpt in the lines that separates the wings from the nose Bridge so it kind of looks like a block that is trying to look like a nose it lacks a lot of planar information the chin region I'm kind of weak at too the years I don't quite know how ears should look like off the top of my head this is my attempt at trying to recreate the Disney style ear okay so basically everything next I attempted to sculpt a popular South Korean artist taeyeon I already knew that it was not going to turn out well she seemed really hard to sculpt and I know well enough where my skill level was and yep so at this point in time I felt that everything was so fragile correcting one part of the face seems to create more problems I tried covering portions of her face to isolate the region and tried to match the likeness as closely as possible but I felt that no matter how much time I spent on this scalp it just wouldn't turn out well lastly just for good measure I sculpted a chibi version of taeyeon I tried to stay away from the current look that I've been doing not because I hate how they looked I just wanted to explore and possibly expand my skill I noted on my journal the parts I felt were the toughest to capture that way I would know what to prioritize on my next session after committing the Hideous crime of birthing these two hits I refused to continue the challenge without more knowledge so I took up a course by speechar who I've learned a lot prior to this challenge just by observing his live streams day two I sculpted about five hits in a course which I won't include in a head count but in the course we studied the planes of the skull sculpted a real skull made a hit over the skull blah blah it kind of gave me a slight understanding of how the face interacts with the skull but then I hit a roadblock my brain just stopped soaking in information I guess I had too many unanswered questions day three in a prf file that came in the course I found two references that I felt were digestible given my current level of knowledge this male bust by Soo Yong Kim and these planes of the skull by Gustav Valley check I'm sorry if I butchered their names later found out that they had even more references on their pages so I threw them into Photoshop made some tweaks for a better readability then threw them into a prf file then I decided that I want to master this milk bust before moving on to anything else I began sculpting latently referencing and observing the planes I titled this stage in my journal as observation so I would observe the reference then Scott until I don't know how to progress anymore then observe the reference again and repeat without realizing at this point in time I started subconsciously noticing certain landmarks of the face such as the angle of the cheekbones the supraorbital margin which at the time I believe I called it the angry bone because it looked like a frown at this point in time I wasn't memorizing the anatomy terms I just viewed them in generic terms like cheekbones neck muscles nose Bridge Etc I even Drew over the sculpt with The annotation tool while observing a reference to identify the planes of the face I proceeded to do this two more times and started getting more comfortable with this workflow day four I sculpted the same mil bust this time without any reference I was basically practicing active recall where you would first study the material then put it away and force yourself to remember it before comparing your results with the material I found it really hard to get the lips right despite practicing on some sphere years I still couldn't really establish a proper workflow to get it right they would always start off looking very pouty then I would have to aimlessly try to make it not look pouty I decided to move on anyway and sculpted the mill bust two more times and I felt pretty happy with my progress so far day five I did another round of active recall of the same mil bust and started feeling ambitious so I decided to sculpt Henry Cavill yeah this this one took a little longer than usual but I was pretty happy with the results this sculpt definitely gave me a nice little dopamine boost and confidence needed to continue this challenge perhaps his eyes were sculpted a little too far apart but compared to this sculpt of Silva which I did last year and was supposed to be a direct reference of Henry Cavill I think I've come a pretty long way day six I felt pumped and ready to move on to the female bust but before I did that I did another two rounds of the mill bust one being observation and the other being active recall afterwards I proceeded to do three rounds of observation of the female bust and I took note of the subtle differences in things like the angle of the jaw and the prominence of the super orbit the brow Rich knows Etc however by the end of the day I started to feel like I was just going through the motions I felt the urge to clear as many heads as I could just to meet the quota and on top of that to be transparent with you I wanted to put out this video that you're watching right now much sooner than I have for that YouTube money but I decided to stay on track and be more effective with my Learning Journey day seven I did another two rounds of observation of the female bust I realized that I had trouble placing the eye sockets and the eye region in general so I spent most of the time on the second bus to declare some doubts day eight again I did another two rounds of observation of the female bust however my hands were itching the sculpt to real people and I already had decided that I was gonna sculpt a male character first so I ditched the active recall session of the female boss and instead did one round of active recall of the meal bust and with full excitement and confidence I decided to sculpt the weekend his facial features seemed fairly prominent and easy to capture but the more I sculpt it the more it started looking like the weekday let me catch you making a joke again let me catch you making that joke again so I had to put the pen down for the night day nine feeling a little gutted from the previous sculpt I attempted to sculpt the weekend again I was pretty happy with how it was turning out at first but it turned out all right definitely could be better but I had to move on so I decided to sculpt Joey from French and honestly I wasn't too mad about it didn't think I did as well as I did with Henry Cavill but I thought maybe because Henry Cavill had such strong features that they were easier to identify so I tried not to be too hard on myself day 10 I did a session of observation of the male bust as a refresher then I proceeded the sculpt Chandler from France 50 minutes in and I just wasn't feeling it I just couldn't get the eyes right so I decided to restart from zero this time in starting the ice in the early stage I still looked a little weird to me at this point I still couldn't figure out why but yeah this is how it turned out definitely one of the tougher ones to sculpt but overall I'm not too mad about it day 11. I decided to Freestyle a hit as a form of warm-up just to get in a Groove but it ended up being really fun and it also gave me some perspective of how to manipulate the face so I decided to do it two more times really letting myself go and ended up with these interesting results then I did another observation and active recall session of the mailbox day 12. I gave myself a list of face shapes to Freestyle from and I have to do it for both male and female first one being a rounded face type I ended up emphasizing on the nasolabial falls and saggy jowls implying that they're old second one being a blocky face type I decided to lengthen a jaw and emphasize on the macedo I also gave them a really blocky nose the female one turned out really weird and creepy but anyway the last one being an evil face type so naturally I gravitated towards pointy features I elongated the body of the mandible amid the Helix of the Year pointy and again at this point in time I still haven't had any of the anatomical terms memorized also you can see that I was still very much influenced by the bust of Soo Yong Kim So day 13 after another round of active recall as a warm-up I just decided to observe yenskopp's approach of sculpting faces in hopes of toning down the influence of the mil bust after which I freestyled a regular male face and it kind of worked the distinct zygomatic bone massader and nose were no longer as pronounced then I decided that it was time to sculpt real faces again so I sculpted Ross from friends and at this point in time I was pretty happy with how it turned out in hindsight the transition from the nasolabial fold to the modulus is too harsh but yet it lacks depth but I was happy so I did another round of observation of the female bust before sculpting Rachel from Friends I was kind of nervous at this point considering that it was the first real life female that I was about to sculpt ever since the birth of my three lab experiment at first I couldn't get her very recognizable lips right but after a ton of tweaking I was so happy with how it turned out it definitely gave me a dopamine boost day 14 it was time to sculpt Monica also from friends this time with a little twist I decided to sculpt her smiling and it definitely threw me off I didn't like how it turned out at all and I thought maybe because it was my first time sculpting a realistic smile then I decided to subscribe to yenskop's patreon for a month and got the same sculpt mail from Arcane to observe his workflow and to just soak in more information it gave me an Insight on how to approach sculpting eyes better so I proceeded on to sculpt Phoebe again from friends and I gave her a smile too I really liked how this one turned out the landmarks were really clear and readable plus I took much less time with this one so I thought okay let's give Monica another go so I attempted Monica once again and yeah maybe Monica is just too difficult to sculpt I think it's better than the first attempt but maybe it's the copium anyway day 15 it's time to move on to stylized characters I have a few characters from Encanto in line Each of which I will sculpt four different Expressions I started off with abuela Alma because I liked her prominent features the silhouette of her profile her nose her tear back her jowl really piqued my interest once I was done with aesthetic post I duplicated it and began sculpting the other Expressions I realized that you could just visualize how she would emote with a facial rig and just sculpt accordingly I definitely gained some perspective from this exercise I learned to identify the Bony areas and avoid messing up the forms I learned to pinpoint the inner and outer parts of the eyes to identify the angle of the eyes at this point I thought ooh Disney characters seem pretty easy to sculpt we'll see about that day 16. I sculpted Mirabelle same thing four different Expressions I realized that I became less afraid of the lasso mask I used to fear the blemishes that it leaves behind because then you would have to smooth it out and you know how smoothing it out could destroy the forms but not so much anymore I'm more confident now that I could just sculpt the forms back in day 17. it's time to sculpt dollars this time I wanted to try sculpting the eyelids and ears separately sculpting the ears separately turned out to be more effective and flexible than I thought it was going to be so it's definitely going to my tool belt the separate eyelets on the other hand turned out to be more of a hindrance so never again remember when I said Disney characters seem pretty easy to sculpt well this is where I got my ass whooped and humbled her features were really soft and I had a really hard time placing them good time day 18. it was time to sculpt Bruno this time I decided to sculpt the neck separate from the head again this turned out to be more effective and flexible than I thought it was gonna be but in hindsight this approach is slightly slower than the usual pulling from the hit method however it's a tool that's worth going into my tool belt while sculpting Bruno I had a little Epiphany that the bottom of the zygomatic bone is aligned with the bottom of the nose also the surface between the bottom eyelid and the top part of the zygomatic bone is actually quite large anyway Bruno was extremely fun to sculpt I noted now that my weak points were the placement of the cheekbones and The Tear bag so to address these weak points I watched some of Speed Charge live streams and Yen sculpt's patreon video and observed how they approached them afterwards I decided to sculpt this character by Sam Das Arts the last time I sculpted one of his characters it didn't turn out the best so naturally I was pretty nervous I wondered if the Disney characters would hinder my ability to sculpt characters with slightly more realistic features I was also really worried that it was not gonna work out because I initially only referred to this one portrait but I ended up cross-referencing another portrait of his and I was really relieved and happy with the results day 19 I sculpted two more of his characters one being the cross-reference and the other being one of his OCS Kara I relied on landmarks such as the angle of the jaw how far out the profile of their lips and nose are the size of their eyes the distance apart and the size of the neck relative to the Head I think I should remind you that at this point in time I still haven't had any of the anatomy terms memorized maybe except for a sternocleidomastoid the best muscle in the human body we all know yeah anyway well Scotland Kara I finally figured out how to place the ice more effectively I would sculpt in the cavity and focus on the placement of the upper eyelids then insert the eyes before filling the lower eyelids this trick worked for the most part but at this point in time I still wasn't sure why anyway I'm seeing things now that I'd really love to fix but I was really happy with how they all turned out now it's time to move on to a different style and this time I decided to study the works of Riot I was pretty intimidated by their characters but I figured that I should start with what looked the toughest to sculpt and that for me was silco from Arcane 30 minutes in and I already hated how it was turning out so I took a step back shook it off and decided to restart I knew that this was gonna be hard so I wasn't too bummed about it this time I sculpted the head separate from the neck and just hoped for the best there are so many details on his face I had a really hard time placing his features but I ended up really enjoying sculpting his face and was pretty happy with how it turned out day 20 it was time to sculpt Jinx also from Arcane I figured that it would be an easier task compared to silco so I was pretty excited about one hour in and uh that doesn't look anything like Jinx I was a little discouraged not gonna lie considering that this was hit number 65. I decided to count it as a hit anyway and try again and again and again and I couldn't do it I didn't know why I tried really hard to place the side planes and the front planes I tried matching her face in every single angle but it feels like day one again where one little tweak would break the sculpt so yeah I felt defeated I took the weekend off to reset but I was worried are my skills going to deteriorate from the two days break I don't know day 23 the end Scopes had just released a new course on sculpting head so I decided to purchase the ultimate version went through the videos and things started clicking again in the course clarified more questions that I had for example the upper eyelid should be more forward than the lower eyelids like this information alone was such a huge breakthrough for me and I could confirm that the temple is in fact where the tilt of the brow is so I decided to Freestyle a meal bust but halfway through it I suddenly had the urge to sculpt Pedro Pascal this time I was much more patient and delicate with the sculpt at this point I decided to use the I region as a point of reference and sculpt the remaining features accordingly this bait capturing the likeness a lot easier and less fragile also I realized that I could suddenly remember some of the anatomical terms of the face not that it matters but being able to break down parts of the face into smaller groups and label them is really helpful so taking a break turned out to be a really good decision and I was extremely happy with how this guy gulp turned out such a nice way to get the ball rolling again day 24 I continued watching jenskop's course this time tackling the ears and I accompanied the course with the book I wish I stumbled upon since the very beginning Anatomy for sculptors specifically the book on the form of the hit and neck I honestly cannot recommend this book enough anyway something that I've always struggled with was sculpting the back of the ear I Know It's oddly specific but it's an area I often Overlook I realized that the back of the year is literally the contract of the Year and that means it really shouldn't be that thick go ahead and pinch the insides of the ears and notice how they're only about as thick as the wings of your nose after the much needed confidence boost I decided to tackle jinx again this time I told myself that I wasn't gonna be hard on myself if it doesn't turn out well and it didn't turn out the best but I was satisfied enough to move on from this sculpt I decided to move on to characters from valorent and for this case I chose to sculpt Phoenix from the cinematics instead of the in-game model I wanted to start off with the character with more prominent features I didn't do his locks because they were very time consuming to do so instead sculpted a silhouette of his hair and was satisfied so I moved on to Sage again from the cinematics not the in-game model I was worried that I was gonna butcher it especially after that traumatic Jinx experience but I thought it turned out pretty good almost to a point where I feel I did Phoenix a little dirty so day 25 I decided to give Phoenix another shot this time giving him the locks that he deserved it did take a little longer but by the end of it I was really glad that I gave him another shot I finished the day with two more Valerian characters both again from the cinematics first one being deadlock which I think turned out okay and neon which I think turned out pretty great this day felt pretty productive and I was getting back in a Groove Day 26 I was inspired by the second version of Phoenix that I just sculpted and I had the urge to rescap some of the earlier characters that I thought could be improved I started with the weekend and I really made sure to get the ice right and sculpt the other features according to it oh and something I noticed I finally broke out of the suion Kim Mill bust habit that I developed and instead use it as a visual guide the suion Kimmel must have some prominent angle changes that I personally find really useful to remember and that for me is the zygomatic Bones the masseter and the line that goes from the nasal label falls to the chin once I was done with the weekend sculpt I put it beside the first version and [Music] I was shocked at how ugly the first one looked well I guess it's objective but I think objectively if we're slowly talking about the likeness and the resemblance of the weekend I think the second one is much closer in fact if you're talking from a stylized standpoint I kind of prefer the sculpt I did before New Year's that was solely done just by observing a reference but I think setting the eyes as a point of reference was a really good idea and it's safe to say that it will be part of my workflow now feeling ecstatic I decided to re-sculpt Joey now if you put them side by side despite the fact that the second version looks more anatomically correct I think I captured the likeness of Joey better with the first version especially the eyes but I wasn't too mad about it plus I think it helps knowing that I completed the scalp 40 minutes quicker than I did with the first one day 27 I decided to start the day with a freestyle planes of the mill face which essentially turned out to be just another active recall session of the suyang Kim's meal bust this was just a quick little refresher before re-sculpting Chandler Chandler was one of the tougher ones to sculpt so I wasn't expect too much and yeah it turned out a little weird but once again the second version looks more anatomically correct but the likeness of the first one seems closer maybe it's the hair or the shape of the face either way I wasn't too bad about it but I did feel that I jumped to a high poly count way too early ended up at about 500 000 faces excluding the ears and the neck so I tasked myself to not exceed 300 000 faces including the years and neck for the next sculpt hoping that I will achieve the likeness at a much lower poly count so I decided to sculpture Ross next and gave him his iconic mouth opened blank face I tried my hardest to achieve the likeness while keeping the poly count as low as possible and I was really surprised to see the lightness start to appear at only 40 000 faces including his ears and neck before remeshing it to about 120 000 faces just to refine his features a little bit I was really happy with how this turned out day 28 feeling a little encouraged I decided to give Chandler another shot but before I did that I did a quick freestyle of the mail bus without any reference just as a quick little warm-up then it was go time again I tried my best to achieve the likeness at the lowest number of faces possible so including the neck and the ears I ended up with about 120 000 faces but I'm not necessarily very happy with how it turned out I guess it's just currently out of my league to sculpt however I'm glad that I could at least finish this sculpt in about an hour less than version two so I'll take that also it was during the sculpt that I found out in this amazing book that our eyes aren't completely parallel due to this thing called the angle Kappa that is the angle between the visual axis and the pupillary axis there's more to this but all of this is to say that our eyes bow out at around 5 degrees when looking at an infinite distance anyway I freestyle the female bust again without any reference this was just a quick warm-up before sculpting Monica Monica was also one of the tougher ones to sculpt so again I wasn't expecting too much about an hour in I thought it looked pretty promising I thought that maybe this was finally the time I break through but then I threw the hair on and it suddenly didn't look like Monica so I proceeded to tweak the face even more and eventually ended up with this maybe Monica is just another character that is currently out of my league to sculpt for some reason they look more like the characters without the hair than with it so after all maybe it's the hair that's bad I don't know me that that would take too much time to find out so day 29 I wanted to explore chibifying some of the characters that I've sculpted during this challenge so I decided to study the adults call once again with the guidance of Speed Charge course that I mentioned in day two and this is what I ended up with then I found these toddler skull references and basically more of the adult skull into a toddler skull and noted down the differences of the measurements and this is what I got pause the video if you want to read it then I sculpted over the skulls and gave them a face the adults call with more prominent features and the toddler skull with softer features once I was done I was curious to see how it would turn out if I gave the toddler skull adult-like features instead of the usual Bean shaped face that I normally gravitate towards I thought that maybe this could be a style that I could ask explore if it turned out well I tried my best to sculpt it to resemble the adult version and this is how it turned out not gonna lie it looks a little weird can very easily get creepy but I wasn't ready to give it up yet day 30. before I carried on with a smallifying of the adult face I decided to sculpt Antonio Madrigal from Encanto just to get an idea of how Disney interprets younger characters and I was really happy with how this turned out if you compare adult Mirabelle to her younger self the rules pretty much checks out taller forehead taller eye sockets shoulder nose shoulder maxilla and shorter mendable day 31 and 32 are pretty much just modified a bunch of characters I had sculpted previously like Pedro Pascal the weekend Ross Joey Rachel Abella Elma and Bruno the fact that I had to capture the likeness of the adult features while fitting them onto a toddler skull made it a really interesting exercise it forced me to carefully identify which part of each character's face makes them who they are as of now I personally think that the silhouette of the face and the eyes play the biggest roles anyway this is how they turned out I still don't quite know how I feel about this after the smallifying process I wanted to see if it hindered my ability to sculpt regular faces so I sculpted another seven Das Arts portrait just as a little test and at this point I kinda can't afford to fail considering that this is hit number 97 although it did feel a little weird sculpting in this proportion again thankfully it didn't hinder anything and it turned out okay now all there's left to do is to sculpt these three heads again and see how much I have improved so I'm gonna sculpt these two heads first before I sculpt this one so while I sculpt the two heads let me give you my thoughts on the course and resources that I use during this challenge first of all the hit anatomy and sculpting exercises caused by speed Char as a fresh Anatomy newbie in my opinion this course is not the most beginner friendly but instead I'd recommend this course to early intermediate users who wants to polish their head Anatomy knowledge and improve the speed of their workflow by observing his approach he does drop a lot of golden nuggets throughout the course and the better I got the more useful the course became especially like the portion of the course where he sculpts over beginner submissions to address their mistakes if you have seen one of his content or live streams you know that it's known for his insane speed and humor if you're tight on cash some courses on udemy tend to go on sale including his if not be sure to check out his art station to see if his courses are cheaper in there plus artists get to keep 95 of their earnings on Art station so you'd definitely be doing them over there second of all master sculpting hits by Yen Scopes this course is beginner friendly the walkthroughs that come with a basic version definitely answered some of my questions so I'd say it's more than enough to get you started this course comes with plenty and I mean plenty of references ranging from screenshots in prf files to blend files with detailed models that have been meticulously labeled the ultimate version to me is optional but it does dive into specific features like the eyes nose mouth and ears which has helped me clear some dots that I had it also comes with free future upgrades and chapters in fact while I was working on this video he released an additional four hours worth of content which I have yet to check out it's safe to say that you'll get your money's worth but if you can't afford the ultimate version I'd happily recommend the basic version anyway this is how it turned out as you probably saw I struggled really hard with the hair but overall I'm really happy with the results and I think it's safe to say that I improved if you disagree let me know in the comments down below last of all Anatomy for sculptors this to me is a must-have for visual Learners it is packed with invaluable information and can even be found in a workspaces of Industry professionals from companies such as Riot games and more if I could do this challenge all over again I would personally buy their book on the form of the head and neck before starting this challenge or buying any courses I say that because ever since I knew of them they've been serving as a great cross-reference to the courses that I mentioned earlier you know as if they're textbooks I started off by solely relying on their content that were generously provided on your art station and putting them together in a prf file and milk this free alternative until I was itching for more information on I believe the neck eventually I bought their ebook bundle on their web page as of today there would eventually be a pop-up prompting you to sign up for their newsletter in exchange for a 10 discount code I believe if it's your first time checking out you also get a 10 discount code on checkout know these discount codes do not stack up just in case you're wondering and just a personal observation they seem to have a streak on these holiday sales maybe they'll have one this year too I don't know make of it what you will so if you're tight on cash make sure to keep a lookout these great deals if you do get the book I have an Affiliated Link in the description and before you roll your eyes I do genuinely go by everything I said about this book Plus for no additional cost you'll get to support this channel so if you do get it through my link I'd like to thank you for the support so this is how the smallify taeyeon turned out again I called it smallified because it's a chibi with adult features and I don't know what else to call it here's what they look like side by side without the hair I think the after not only resembles taeyeon more but I think it turned out much less creepy as you guys may have noticed her hair looks a little different that's because I refer to a different reference picture oh and by the way the hair is copied and pasted from the adult version that I'm about to sculpt so yeah those are my thoughts on the resources that I used and without further Ado let's sculpt the final head [Music] thank you [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] thank you foreign [Music] if you guys made it this far thank you guys so much for watching ever since I finished this challenge I've been doing a little bit of practice behind the scenes in hopes of improving I even re-sculpted jinx again but yeah I hope you guys enjoyed this video consider subscribing and watch this video next if you want to watch me take 18 days to animate a 5 Seconds animation bye guys

Channel: tinynocky

Views: 588,540

Keywords: blender, tinynocky, blender 3d, blender 3d character, blender how to make a character, blender how to, blender animation, blender 3.6, blender 3.6.1, 100 Heads in Blender, 100 Heads Challenge, I suck at Sculpting Heads so I did it 100 times, I Sculpted 100 Heads because I suck at it, blender sculpting

Id: sYKpwDCfQpA

Length: 30min 39sec (1839 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 17 2023