A couple of sculpey sculptures from this week

Here are a couple sculpey sculptures from this week.  Usually spend about 2-5 hours on each one.  I start with no plan and just see what comes from the sculpey.  Most of the time is spent trying to figure out what I see and to create something new.

7 Cyclops over 7 days

Here is another cyclops design.  This one I had insects on my mind while sculpting.

7 cyclops in 7 days

I should have just called these posts on the cyclops, "cyclops studies"...Its gonna make me look like I cant count or something!

Today I drew up a couple of cyclops based of a skull that I was shown to be the original inspiration of the cyclops myth, the mastodon skull.

The muscles are out of control on this guy below...I know.  I just got a little carried away with it.

This next guy I sort of tamed him up a bit.

7 Cyclops over 7 days!

Cyclops #1... I have found that I am not comfortable with the idea of a cyclops.  Something about the idea just doesnt make sense so, I am going to do 7 cyclops over the next 7 days.  With the hopes that I can shake the need to make sense of the cyclops. 

This first posted cyclops is done in Zbrush.  I kind of like him.  I liked the ears and his big mouth full of crooked teeth.  I dont really want to follow the usual style of cyclops which was just a giant man with one eye.  That just never made sense to me.  The whole one eye thing just seems silly.  How could it see depth?  It would have a terrible time navigating about the place. 
Anyway, we shall see what comes next in the cyclops future.

A few Zbrushins

Hope you enjoy these few Zbrush creations.

Sculpey updates

These are my latest Super Sculpey creations.   These would have been done over the last 2 - 3 weeks.  Im trying to focus on proportion, form, anatomy then wrinkle and details.  These will be painted in the future...once I get my air compressor.

Old man head

Alien half body

 Alien head

Goofy alien head

Zombie

Alien demon

Demon

A fresh thingy

Hi, I threw together this thingy today.  I dont know what it is, maybe aquatic...with chicken wings.

Click on the image to see it larger.

Making clean edges in Zbrush

This video shows my technique for creating clean edges. There are two techniques I use, both similar. One is to simply mask, in low subdiv, and pull the geometry over other geometry and then pinch to make the edges close so that after subdiv up they remain close.
The other is to turn off "subdiv smooth modifier" so when subdiv up levels the corners remain.
You will see both techniques in this video.




Making clean edges in Zbrush from Nick McGavern on Vimeo.

Edit existing topology in Zbrush

This is a short demo showing how to take existing geometry and to edit the geometry/topology to better suit your mesh needs.
Load a Zsphere.
Scroll to the "Topology" dropdown.
Click "Select Topo" and choose your geometry to be edited.
Go to the "Rigging" dropdown above and choose "Select Mesh" and choose the mesh your editing (to be used as a surface that you can lay your verts onto).
Click the "Edit Topology" button and begin editing the topo.

Tips.
Hovering over the verts will turn your brush green, you can then click on that vert to use as a starting point.
To reset the beginning point of your vert placement, double click in space, otherwise it will start at the center of your zsphere.
Make your draw size about 1-3 so you are only effecting one vert at a time.
This method can also be used to merge two tools, once they have been merged down to one.
Also great way to add geometry to a sculpture without having to venture out to another program.

Edit topology in Zbrush from Nick McGavern on Vimeo.

Zbrush layers tutorial

I have a tutorial for you all to have a gawk at.
Basically I had created a sculpture in zbrush and posed it before saving it in a neutral pose.  I would usually pose a sculpture on a layer but this time forgot.  So, this is a work around to get the creation back to the neutral pose.   Using layers and importing an early saved version of an exported .obj into a layer at the lowest subdiv on the latest posed sculpture...the video will explain it better.