[Dekard]

I'm in my 3rd week of school and our project is to make a reference model of a character we want to rotate in animation, we are to mock up a head to rotate for reference.

I want to make the reference, portfolio type of product, my idea was an alien similiar but different then the ones in the fifth element, the mangalore's. Mine will eventually look way different, but I can't seem to find any tutorials on the basics like eyes, ears, etc.. Anyone have any suggestions? Here's a pic of what I have gotten so far.



Any crits and suggestions would be greatly appreciated I have 2 weeks for this to be done, just thought while I had the time this weekend I'd get it started.

Thanks!

[lalPOOO]

I'm not great with clay, but it might look kind of neat if you made the top lip fatter, and added some bumps on the top of the head. uh, the only eye making advice I could give you would be to sort of pinch it out, to create some kind of inset eyes.

[Dekard]

Cool, thanks for the advice, someone else said I might be able to make an eye cut it in half since I don't really have fulls sockets to work with since I started with a prefired base, if I cut the eye in half my sockets wouldn't need to be so deep. Then either fire it up like that or maybe even purchase a pair of eyes for it then cut them in half, but I think purchasing eyes maybe cheating a bit..

[Bilbo]

looks good so far, although a bit too smooth. try balancing those soft areas with more angular, boney regions.
as to creating those eye lids- from my (extremely brief) experience , working on separate spheres and then connecting and blending them in works best.

[Ben Barker]

In my experience it is easiest to sculpt the lids around hard eyes. Either get some premade eyes from a doll/hobby shop, or make them out of sculpey and bake them. Then put them on the model to give you an armature to sculpt the lids around.

[Kaete]

Eeee! I *love* his lips. They're so individual. Totally perfect.

Well, the only sculpting experience I have is with gargoyles, so I don't know if you want something like that. Heck, you probable know more than me! But anyway, here are some things I keep in mind when I'm sculpting eyes:

The first thing you want to consider is the skeleton underneath. The eye socket has a very subtle effect under all that muscle and skin. But the socket is still there, and the eye will look like a unnatural, cartoony type eye if you forget it.

If you need help with how the eye socket looks, just go [url=http://"http://www.csuchico.edu/anth/Module/skull.html"]here.[/url] They have a quicktime of a skull that lets you look at it from all angles.

Next, you want to think about where you'll put the eyeball. Of course, it's roughly in the middle of the eye socket. But it doesn't stick out as much as you might think. The majority of the eyeball is actually inside the skull.

After that you just have to add a little bit of muscle around it and eyelids. Ta da! all done.

[Dekard]

Welp, I finished it up and painted it, I didn't have as much time to texture it and add detail painting as I would of liked to for my project, but I had to at least fire it for my project. (It's animation, where I have to draw the character now in a turnaround animation, so it doesn't need details as much we add those with pencil anyhow) I may redo this later and add more details but thought I'd show everyone what I came up with.

Whatcha think?

[SoMK]

I,m a bit late but I'll throw my canadian cents... Basically, the only thing you need to remember is that an eye is a ball.. so If you go the easy way, just dig the orbits, add a dried ball of your putty and apply two layers for each eyelids... that you'll blend to the paste with a thin brush

That's the easiest way to go imho... I tend to be lazier those days so I just carve from a blotch of putty now.. but the ball/eyelids method can't be missed :)

(The other picts of the WIP on FigNuts)