What You Get Wrong About Sculpting Heads

hey guys hitting a Morton from flip normals here and it's been a while but we're doing another Anatomy video where we're just we're gonna be in severs and we're gonna do some sculpting this video is gonna be focused on how to make your faces or head sculpt look less weird like there's always this I would say it's more like a beginner mistake of how to attach your your head and neck to the rest of the body so we've sort of tried to boil it down to the most essential connection points when you're doing your sculpt of how to make them look more natural so the first thing here is obviously we need we're just calling this from a sphere and that's just a GUID like a little to get a head in there we give you something as a base but this is just to show you the sort of the thought process behind how we would approach making making a head so first of all there's obviously the skull and then we connect it to the to the neck the neck is just basically a glorified cylinder that just extends out from the head and I think a lot of the time we see when people do busts especially with busts because you don't you don't you you tend to focus on just the head but I find that the connecting parts down like the traps down to the shoulders make a big difference for the gesture of the character and like the feeling of your final sculpt so I tend to always include these and you can always you know just crop it off in your final render but it makes a really big difference and it makes it a lot easier to connect everything together yeah all the time is for looking at sculpts and it's hard to figure out why they don't necessarily work and this is someone we have been talking about a few times where you forget that the real world exists like you have this beautifully sculpted face and now you're wondering why it looks a bit weird well this because it's a floating face it's a floating head if you were to take a portrait of somebody just with a camera and it was only a floating face in darkness it wouldn't look like it wouldn't look natural it could look really cool but it doesn't look natural no and and already here so the disclaimer like the face is not going to be the the main focus of but just to get something in there so the YouTube thumbnail doesn't look complete trash I just wanted to make something that was just like just it's completely faceless but at least it has some proportions and you got to feel good about yourself when it comes to it's probably an amazing knack for a shitty face not even by the end of this I was kind of contemplating should I sculpt more now but we could I hopefully get the point across here but you can see from the side here there's actually on the side of the neck we have a big big muscle which helps us turn the head from side to side which is called the sternocleidomastoid I would recommend that you look this up well we can leave the anatomical names in the description so it's easy for you to look up just on like oh and an Anatomy Bible or something but the sternocleidomastoid connects between the sternum so this that's the sternal pipe part and the Clio mastoid that's just behind the ear there's like a mastoid process that sticks out so that mastoid there that's what it connects to once you know these points it literally is a connect some lines together from some points yeah essentially it is a edges the point which goes right behind the ear to just down in the sternum just where your clavicle is attached and just draw a straight line between them then you get this beautiful diagonal line from your ear down and I think most of the time people tend to get the the sternocleidomastoid somewhat correct and and so you know that's a good starting point for them but where most of the scopes would have fall apart I think is the the connection between the neck and the trapezius so the trapezius is what's on your back and this sort of like connects up by your shoulder and links the clavicle shoulder and the back and the neck together that's it's a tricky shape because it's like a lot of muscles are very are kind of two dimensional in a way like the biceps for example it's just like it's just like what I guess it's a 3-dimensional shape in the way that it's a cylinder that just gets sits on top of the arm but it goes from one point to the other that the traps are like it wraps around your back and up over your shoulders kind of so again look up the trapezius just to get a feel for the underlying and it's like a flamboyant diamond Mack yeah yeah it's really crazy and if you don't get that right then nothing is going to work yeah so at the it's interesting because the main point of this video that I want to get across is gonna be how we actually use the traps to connect the neck and the rest of the body but you can't do that until like later in the sculpt because everything else top down has to work before we can really get in the traps quite nicely that is a really tricky one as well too like this present this because the idea here is we want to learn we don't teach you how to sculpt a good neck but you can't just that's not exciting no just a good neck by itself it connects an awesome part which is the head to an awesome part which is the body hmm but the stuff in between it's just kind of boring and you just want to put a little cylinder there and this call it code called a day but you just have to get it right if the connection point between the head and the border doesn't work it's just gonna feel really unnatural and some like right now for example where we have this right now I'm just just dragging stuff out just like like I don't know stupid play doh or something and it's really melty and kind of mushy and this is kind of what I wanted to address here like this is this is usually at the level I feel a lot of beginners kind of get stuck at where they have the neck and they have parts of the chest or the traps or something that that connect but it all flows together in a in a very liquid way like everything is like one shape so it's trying to break the neck and the traps down into very distinguished shapes so you can actually see what makes up what part so here just trying to draw out that we can we're gonna have the neck here and then on either side we're gonna have the pecs which is the chest muscles and then on the top there we're gonna have the trapezius yeah this is a sternocleidomastoid you're drawing it yeah and you can see just a straight line so and a lot of these strokes that are getting put down especially when you're working off of something this rough it's it's more of like a guide that can then get refined it doesn't have to be like you don't have to put down the perfect stroke the first time but it's more of a guide for you to see okay which which angles are we working with and to help you delineate the shape the cool thing about sculpting something like a neck is that everyone has this yeah like you you can look at yourself you can if you don't have a mirror by a desk then you can always take some selfies you know just you you can very easily get reference here and whenever I'm scolding these things I like to again have some like photographic truth so then you can you can do your sculpt and just straight up align your photos to what you're sculpting that's not cheating that's just making sure getting it right it's incredibly hard to sculpt these kind of stuff without actually aligning it at least in the beginning yeah and here you just saw a quick we're just using the transpose lines one for you know the the sternocleidomastoid and then one for the you know the neck alone what's the inside of the neck called where you swallow where you have the Adam's apple you know and that was just to illustrate that you have these two shapes going across each other one goes like one angle and one goes the other angle so there's a very there is a vid there's a very sort of definite separation there I found people either make the next way too long or way too short yeah it's a hard thing to figure out and like the obviously there's a lot of individual variation as well but there is definitely a point where it's too much or too little it's funny like you have like obviously people's Heights is based on all the components in the body but some people are really tall because they have really long legs and some people are really tall because a really long neck yeah so they can have a pretty normal body but they have their their have a bit of like a giraffe snack so it's very interesting there's so much individual variation what comes in this now this is an important part that I wouldn't encourage most people to include in their busts and this is and that's the shoulders because the shoulders you can get a lot of gesture in the shoulders but more importantly at least for me it helps me sort of figure out the rest of the puzzle because a lot of things can either terminate at the shoulder or originate from the shoulder yeah when I'm sculpting almost like whatever whatever it is I'm always putting in the scapula as well yes the scapula sand the clavicles basically shoulder blades and a collarbone if you don't have that then it's incredibly hard to get anything right and this doesn't matter if it's if it's a human like this which is way more naturalistic Worf is a crazy creature or something if you don't have those bones in there then it's you have nothing to attach any muscles to and here is just illustrating we have the trapezius actually going all the way up the neck and like it did like with the back muscles just to show you that you actually have some tubular muscles going at your back of the neck that sort of Leatherwood what keeps your neck upright it's a lot of personality in the neck as well imagine if you were to hunch this guy over he might look a bit more sinister or a bit more like Hunchback of Notre Dame like where if you were to like push his head backwards and straight notice over his overall posture he might have way more heroic so when it comes to to building character it's not just about does he have a million scars the force it is also about a million scars but it's also about the overall posture of the character if you can tell what kind of character this is purely by the gesture office neck or his head like you've already got done a lot of the heavy lifting so this part I think is the most crucial now here you're starting to notice how the trapezius it like goes at an angle into the actual neck into the sternocleidomastoid and you see that separation like it is not really like a smooth transition from the traps into the neck it's actually quite like there's actually quite there's a definite angle switch and getting that angle in there and getting that like a hard crease I think that's what really helps to to separate the the traps from the neck and actually make your sculpt looks more look more natural yeah and also one other thing is like the angle of the neck making sure that it actually has like oh I don't know what like the specific degree is let's say is 15 degrees or 20 degrees or something like that there's going to be individual variation for sure but making sure that it's not like straight up and down like the neck actually tends to go forward a little bit this was a lot of variation here between men and women yeah where if you want if you want again if you want this really heroic feature then you make his neck as thick as his thigh make it like mega thick but if you want something more elegant yeah nothing necessarily just between men and women but if you want something more elegant you make it neck very very slim I want one person to to look for when it comes to neck is regardless of how you feel about her is Ivanka Trump like she has a beautiful neck very very long and very slim yeah that's actually true and also very round face it's very easy if I remember correctly I haven't looked at her in a while but I I think there's something like her face it's very it's very elegant very smooth crazy neck yeah but here as well like you see the tubular tubular muscles going up up through like up and neck up the back of the neck and that's again to help give some shape to to the neck there as well so it's not like a complete like just standard cylinder there is actually variation in the neck as well and in the back there where you see that's actually the traps connected to the shoulder that helps gives especially when you're sculpting a man that helps give more of that heroic muscular feel to it and now here we're just gonna sort of like carve out the important bits here just to actually illustrate to you like so you can see the the trapezius going up there and then the sternocleidomastoid connecting up back to the back of the ear and down to the clavicle it really flows very beautifully into each other yeah it'd be really cool like I don't know like a sci-fi suit kind like a crisis yeah anything will you draw out the separation between the muscles and then one thing their roles are going to look at is going to be this like right there's gonna be like a triangular shape between the sternocleidomastoid and the trapezius but we're gonna get to that in a little bit and that's I think one of the biggest like one of the most helpful tools in order to like get that good separation between the the the neck and the rest of the body when it comes to the main purpose of this video we don't want you to become next sculptures and specialize in this like it is really a connecting point but you're a few studies you know and do you do you have a couple of studies between men and women really like look at like the rock and then look at like a child and just yeah just look at the variations between them and then just do a few studies and once you understand it how it works however like the traps flow into the neck and how the sternocleidomastoid all works then it all becomes clear and you don't really have to worry too much about it this is something that I'm personally not really thinking too much about because I've just done it for such a long time but it is really important to do Studies on these things yeah another fun little note so right here this is the triangular bit I was talking about that separates the the traps in the neck and the triangular shape that ends at the sternocleidomastoid but the sternocleidomastoid doesn't just connect to the inside of the clavicle it actually also sort of attaches further out on top of the clavicle so but by drawing this triangle here that's sort of like a mental note for me but more to illustrate for you as well that you know this is like the shape that we have in there so having that top of the clavicle be the bottom part of the triangle and then that goes up with the traps up towards the sternocleidomastoid and then you can exaggerate this more if you want to have it like more muscular feel and then build up the traps behind you in your sculpt or you can like lessen the like how deep it is to to make it look I guess less muscular alright for everyone listening now I just want you to note that Morton is doing this on himself yeah like I'm not really sure I guess it's really hard to like explain yeah I feel your neck basically those we're doing this like you I do is all time and having live lectures like I'm using myself as an example yes I'm a person and I'm sculpting a person turns out very handy but when you're you're explaining this I over video you're just gonna be touching your your your own body in ways and people aren't gonna see it like no now I'm touching my traps and we were just joking about it before we should transition into an ASMR Channel you might have some ASMR bloopers for your coming up yeah for this time and for anyone who's interested this one for this problem I'm using Josh Brolin as a quick reference so I have him on a another monitor where I just look at like just his neck and not his Panos form just like regular human form which is still quite impressive because he's like he's pretty old that was very impressive even yeah just watch them in that pull to the other day slightly racist but he needs to yeah but yeah the the clavicle here is actually a really essential part of anything like anything that goes on to connect the neck up there as well because that helps you separate your your deltoids or your shoulders from your pecs as well as the traps so it's sort of like it frames it's kind of like a framing framing element framing bone inside your body it is really good for knowing how to connect or where to connect muscles to it yeah the clavicles are so important the way I like to think about it it's like a bow and arrow for seen from the top like they're not straight they're not straight at all again individual variation there's a lot of there's a little curvature in them both from the top view and the side view and the reason is if they were to be completely straight and you moved your shoulders back you would strangle yourself and you would die which would be a terrible design yes provide for any animal any human which intends to actually live yeah without without the clavicle so you can't really attach the sternocleidomastoid you can't really attach to anything in the shoulders and then you can't attach the shoulder blade and then you can't do anything for the back and the whole house of cars just falls apart in a beautiful fire one thing I wanted you to keep in mind when watching this and doing your own sculpt is that what we talked about before with the way for example the way the traps connect to to the back of the neck or to the neck is that that it's like there's a there's a point where it sort of breaks like a break point it's not just a smooth completely smooth transition and you're gonna have that many many places on your body and getting it's kind of like when people start like painting in Photoshop to begin with a lot of it's like very smooth like it's kind of very airbrush it because you're you haven't trained that skill to like make really hard lines and and then do like highlights on that it's the same thing when when we're sculpting here you obviously have places that need to be really smooth but then you have other parts that have like a really hard cut and then then they transition into something soft so it's learning and figuring out where these transition points are and that's really gonna help you I guess make your sculpt more naturalistic right now he's a little bit thin like it a little bit like he's not she's not super wired I was like trying to figure out okay how why do we actually want to make him and then here this part here now I'm making this cut up towards the back of the neck that's really gonna start selling that's what's gonna start selling the trapezius because they don't go into the front of the neck they actually sit on the back and go up along the back of the neck there and that's what that's what really makes the the trapezius feels like more natural and the more ripped and strong you want to feel just just use the inflate brush basis if you want it to be elegant you just have a really nice curve going down but if you want to make the Hulk you just make the traps as big as a truck like they're they're just the Hulk is 85% wraps and then 4% face and the rest is just anger an interesting note there like if you want to bulk up the traps you you should bulk them up more towards the neck and not towards the deltoids so towards the deltoids there's not really a lot of space because there's just a lot of bone that they connect to us but along the neck up there that's really where you want to build volume so you want to get the slanting part you want to pull that up along the neck not so much along the the delt because you know you have the clavicle there and you can you can move the clever coop you can you know buff the clavicle yeah you lift weights and your bones get strong toughest clavicles in the world so this is irrelevant completely irrelevant to the next goal is to I was just messing around with it year it's nice to have nice ears yeah as like something even though we're making a video that specifically about the neck and how to integrate it sometimes you get distracted and you're like okay okay I just need a little break now it's funny that like the most detailed part of the next cultist a year yeah man every time we done goofed again yeah yeah so just take away from this video that you just have to get the neck right like just actually focus on trees or as a separate element don't just treat it as a connection point which is the cylinder between the head and the body like just take it seriously and get the traps right yeah and remember there's like member meant to make your faces or your head like like skull wise too long and that's another thing I see a lot in beginners is making sort of like these alien skulls because sometimes you may you look too much at skull references but not actually on head references with people where they have muscle and and skin on top so that actually adds quite a lot especially with the neck and I'm working made him first very angry and then very sad very sad yeah but yeah I mean that's that's basically gonna be the end of this video the rest of its just me messing around with his imperfect nose and then realizing whoa wait this wasn't an actual it's not a face mark no but like just on a more serious note like the the most important points here I think for connecting it is going to be this little triangle point between the traps and the sternocleidomastoid because like I said most people seem to kind of grasp the sternocleidomastoid quite well because it's it's quite a simple muscle that just goes straight up and down like this but this triangular part which you can thin out quite a lot and how connects to the back of the neck not the front of the neck I think that usually when I see people get this that's usually when their their necks and and they're had to start to look really really good so yeah that about just covers it for this next sculpting video so thank you guys so much for watching and make sure to leave a comment comment down below and like and subscribe and hits a notification button to get notified every time we put out a new video you you

Channel: FlippedNormals

Views: 76,844

Keywords: 3d, sculpting, zbrush, concept, maya, tutorial, autodesk, film, vfx, animation, flippednormals, henning sanden, morten jaeger, creature, character, texturing, substance painter, substance designer, education, foundry, pixologic, nuke, art, fundamentals, art fundamentals, art school, art tutorials, blender, flipped normals, 3d tutorial, learning 3d, learning ZBrush, 3ds max, cubebrush, cube brush, gumroad, marvelous designer, photoshop, mari, blender guru, free tutorial, cgi, cg, computer graphics

Id: ywKqnm4icVo

Length: 22min 20sec (1340 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 05 2019