WEEK 5 UPDATE

I'm still meeting with Gordon Brown on Fridays to talk about Zbrush, and learn about techniques in sculpting. It seems i'm going to have to do a lot of jumping between packages, and since its a process I am as of yet unfamiliar with, I really need to get some practice before I start sculpting my final characters. I've been doing some practice on a Jedi-like character, trying to get nice detailing from both hard surfaces and flowing cloth, to try and give my model a nice appeal.



The feedback was very constructive - there's a lot of small details I didn't realise that were so wrong, and rectifying them would make the model look so much better. My hard surface work was looking fairly pleasant, but in regards to cloth I need to learn a lot about how cloth folds and sits on a person. When you sculpt, you don't create something, you want to create the illusion of something. Artistic freedom wins again!

Gordon told me a lot about cloth and how to create the illusion of it sitting well. Cloth usually always has a tension point, and always obeys gravity. If nothing is holding on to it, it will hang completely vertically, unless influenced by wind or environment. For example, on the Jedi's waist, the cloth follows the contours of his body - this would not happen in reality, as the fabric would just hang.

I was also taught that painting or creating cloth without reference can just lead to bas sculpting; since cloth is so dynamic and organic, it's really good practice just to look at yourself or find reference for when you sculpt. It can make your sculpts look so much better.

In any case, I am still practicing sculpting before I go onto designing my characters, and also looking into other areas of research, whilst typing parts of my dissertation.