Week 5 report – Friday 18th of October. The face and neck muscles

The Head and Neck.

To sculpt the neck and head, I start by sculpting the form of the skull on the basic shape.  From there I addressed major bony forms of the skull and how they influence the face.  I also thought about how certain muscles influence the final fleshed form. 

I addressed the neck in the same way.  Starting by sculpting the major muscle forms and where it connects to the torso ie. The spine of the scapula and the clavicles. 

The skull

Representing the entire bony structure of the head, the skull consists of serveral distinct parts.  Dividing this up into two major shapes, the cranial mass and the facial wedge. 

The cranial mass is the cranium, the protective casing of the brain.  The facial mass consists of the eye sockets, zygomatic bones, maxilla or upper jaw, and the mandible or lower jaw.

I will be taking a escorche technique to sculpting the face.  Escorche is French for flayed and is a layered approach to sculpting.  I will start by sculpting the skull, then build muscle and fat and skin.  

As I sculpt I am using measure guides provided by Digital Sculpting in Zbrush to help place the features of the skull.  I begin by sculpting the major landmarks ie, the eye sockets and nasal cavity. 

I then move to sketch in the zygomatic bones, making sure to get that zig zag look as it wraps around the face.

I then rough in the jawline, adding negative space for the muscles that will be sculpted in later.  I constantly switch to silhouette ie. Flat colour to adjust the shape of the skull.  I then sculpt in a hole for the mouth and then pull the two ends together. Below is a sculpt video of it

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ptnZQG26Wg&feature=youtu.be

The muscles

For the muscles I used the rake brush and clay tubes with the basic red material applied to give the model a nice colour to the muscles.  I basically followed the pictures given on human anatomy for artists as well as the tutorial to mask out the basic shape of the muscle and fill it in with the rake and clay tubes.  To view this sculpt click here

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7q_k922odV0&feature=youtu.be 

The overlay of skin

Refining the surface meant bringing the model back into a basic material, and then using clay tubes with no alpha and low intensity, and the flatten brush, I was able to put in the fatty tissue and skin of the human.  The challenging part was trying to give the model a smoothed look but not too smooth as to lose some of its realism.  This was done by going in different passes.  The ear was also challenging as I was constantly trying to both get it looking right as well as stay true to its anatomy.

The final face

The biggest challenge overall though was the eye lids.  I spent hours just on shaping the eyes and seeing how light would catch and make shadows.  I made huge improvements on just taking the time to sculpt and shape these.

Final face before fixing up eye lids

Final face front

Final face