Hello again HeckPoint(tm) nation - it’s Carter. Today, you join me in media res as I try a little experiment.

After taking a small break from sculpture to elucidate other facets of the 3D pipeline, I have decided it is time to get back on the saddle as it were re: digital sculpting. Since I apparently hate myself, I’ve decided the only way to do this is to re-attempt the single lesson I completely failed to complete this January - the female bust.

After reviewing THE BOTTOM LINE from my “Month of Progress” post, I have determined with utmost certainty that my failure lies within the five points below.

  1. Be intentional about your growth.
  2. Set time goals and break sessions into chunks.
  3. Dissect and journal your findings.
  4. Donโ€™t fight the process. Things will be ugly and they will take time.
  5. Try not to quit on a sculpt unless you feel theres a good reason.

What you are about to read are my thoughts as I resolutely adhere to these points. If my hypothesis is correct, this story will have a happy ending. If it isn’t, well, I guess we’ll see!

You see, instead of my usual project postmortem, I will be using this post as an ongoing journal to document my progress. I will be following a few simple rules. My time will be divided into fourteen 30-minute chunks for a total of seven hours.

Every thirty minutes, I will take a screenshot of my sculpt and come back here to write not only my thoughts, but also actionable steps I need to take in the next session.

Session 1 (1hr, 30mins)๎…—

Okay, so I cheated a bit and got started already, but I can explain. I hatched this entire plan in direct response to point no. 5.

  1. Try not to quit on a sculpt unless you feel theres a good reason.

Currently, I hate this sculpt. I feel rusty. There is a beast inside of me that wants to see it torn apart.

The beast. Is. Wrong. I must fight it’s cowardice. Instead, I will continue on with the belief that I can fix this. This.

For some additional context, my course intructor has me using a technique that is doing me no favors. We are to build the forms of the face using seperate parts, like a micro-level blockout. Ideally, this is to help me view each of the forms and the ways the interact with the face on their own merits. In practice, its clunky, and I feel like I lack the direct control a brush gives me.

But I will carry on! After viewing the above, this is what I’m thinking.

From the profile:

  1. The cranium as a whole feels too small, especially in comparison to the neck. Either grow the skull or shrink the neck.
  2. The fat pads above the eyes are too far backward. From the profile, they should extend basically all the way to the edge.
  3. The mandible is too sharp and pinched. Round it out and follow the flow of the chin down into the neck.
  4. The curve of the nose is too steep, and pushed too far forward.
  5. The angle where the collar begins isn’t well defined. Tilt the whole connection backwards.

From the front:

  1. The whole face - most of all the forehead - is too wide and the plane changes are too harsh. Shrink it in and soften it out, especially around the temples.
  2. The angle of the mandible is poorly defined.
  3. The cranium is too square. Move towards a nice, smooth egg shape.
  4. Read the lighting around the pads under the eyes. They appear to flat right now.

I may abandon the “blockout” style and start merging pieces to better work on the face as a whole…we’ll see. Welp. Let’s get back to it!

Session 2 (2hr)๎…—

Well, how’d I do? I was worried early on that my corrections from the previous session would take up the entire time, thus leaving me no time to ideate further, but I actually had about 10mins at the end where I felt I had satisfied the above and was able to continue moving freely.

I’m back and forth as to weather or not it would be useful to review the previous points before creating new ones, but we’re quickly getting to the point where this dissection is more of a distraction than a boon, so I’ll keep it as is and give myself a set of new objectives. If they overlap with previous ones, so be it!

From the profile:

  1. The cranium still feels small. I tried to rectify this, but I’m still not there. Maybe I’m due to actually measure the skull front-to-back with a common reference point, say the eyes.
  2. The cranium also does not feel rounded enough - there are clear peaks in the back of the skull.
  3. The angle of the mandible needs to come down and widen out to flatten the front of the jaw a bit.
  4. The nose curve is now too sharp, and the nose too far inwards. The curve should be most noticable at the wing of the nose.
  5. The eye region might need to come forward?
  6. Work on the form of the cheek as it curves up into the eyes.
  7. The neck is too wobbly. Keep a strong cyllindrical primary form.
  8. Give some love to the ears.

From the front:

  1. The forehead is still too wide in comparison to the cranium. Maybe measure this as well.
  2. The eyes regions are too close together, and they need to be brought up in the skull. The eyeline should be roughly halfway down the skull. The brow and nose ridge should be brought upwards.
  3. The nose and lip regions are poorly defined, time to up the res and get them looking less blocky.
  4. The chin indent should fade away into the underside of the cheek and bottom lip, right now its protruding outwards.
  5. The angle of where the neck connects to the traps is too sharp.
  6. The under-eye region is still not rounded. Take not of the highlights under the eyes in the reference.
  7. The neck may be too short?

Time to get back to work!