Week 4 report – Friday 11th October. Gesture and masses

To create this form, I had to focus on the different plane crests of the body ie, the flatness of the chest or the side of the leg.  The plane breaks ie when the chest moves onto the abdominal muscles. And the profile of the way body looks in silhouette form.  

This week I focused on blocking out the general form of the character.  I started by sketching in the torso masses by quickly blocking in an oval shape for the torso and a box for the pelvis.   The torso is made up of three movable masses; the cranial mass, the thoracic mass and the pelvis mass.

The legs was the next thing.  Here I quickly sculpted in an oval shape for the muscle groups here.  The legs are made up of interlocking muscle groups but for this part I was only concerned with the most basic shapes.  

The main brushes I used was the clay tubes to build up form, the move brush to get the silhouette right, and the standard brush and inflate brush on the fingers to give it more shape.  I also used the rake brush to fill in areas.  The smooth brush was used with a low intensity to reduce the bumpy look that artists usually find themselves in. 

I constantly checked the silhouette of my figure to make sure that it looked right at all angles.  You can turn perspective on and off in Zbrush as well to get different views.

Sketching in the torso

Sketching in the leg masses

the sillouhette of the arms

constantly checking the sillouhette

I ended up creating 2 gesture figures and 1 planed figure to really get a sense of the human figure in its basic form. The next step is focusing in on the different parts of the body.  Below is the final gesture figure.

I also did a planar analysis on the figure, focusing on using the pinch and flatten brush to create show the different plane changes, and breaks on the model.  This helped me realise how each muscle is formed and wrapped around the body