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DreamShapers sketch book

Anonymous
Not applicable
Medium is a fantastic experience, before I keep adding sculpts, decided it's time to start a sketchbook.  Will start with a bit of a retrospective, and more or less start at the beginning and with any luck, keep at it for years.  Here's a carousel I made a few months ago, to see the creations up to that point.

Two Year Anniversary Update (mostly sequential with annual highlights)

41cesgktb9ey.jpg

Earlier part of this post, carousel built inside medium with snapshots, from way back when we just met
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UahalLb04TU&feature=youtu.be
403 REPLIES 403

Anonymous
Not applicable
Think I spent more time documenting this than working on it , videos and all, anyhow, was fun.  Added a bunch of ancient sculpture from different cultures to my reference library, while I was at it. 

Deciding whether to continue on with this one, now that I've started using the move tool on the setting, or call it good and just try to knock out another carving

P3nT4gR4m
Consultant
Wicked! So you going pure reductive on these?

Anonymous
Not applicable

P3nT4gR4m said:

Wicked! So you going pure reductive on these?


Built the bricks using regular tools.  They got chewed up plenty when I made them, pretty much threw everything on the wheel at them.  Duplicates of the raw bricks are used for the bases, though not in any particular order.  Made on six faced cube then stacked them, three high, with different face orientations, two or three basic combos, with some minor variants in the way they're fused.

The animist sculpts were pure carving, mostly just using the default oval, a tiny bit with the cube (pretty sure I removed the spirals on some of the blocks with it) and used a couple of the "traditional" tools in places.  Used the smooth brush, on average, to clean up some of the rough edges, although I tried not to go overboard with it, as it tended to work against the look I was going for, especially at the scale I was working at. Anyhow, figure that counts for sanding.  Didn't use the mirror, expected I'd get a more "natural" look that way, and is a good exercise.  The setting (candles, bowls, tentacles, flames, etc) used standard methods, I was tired of hacking and slicing at that point.  

So basically, ya, though only on the figures.  Undo was used pretty liberally, but no clay adds, inflates, layer merges etc, once the carving starts. 

Kind of interesting, in a stone-age kinda way.  Really have to think about what is going to be there after the cuts, especially with the limbs and the protruding areas of the face.  Probably not a tenth of the thinking that a sculptor or carver would have to though.  The undo is a big advantage, even if it is easier to miss a cut. 

One upside about going for a "raw-hewn" look, is it's pretty fast.  When your not adding clay, moving clay, and so forth, you don't have a lot of room to muck about with getting a curve just right, since you're not trying so much for "realism".  Sculpt just gets smaller, so unless you want to really get intricate with the detail, you run out of area to work pretty quickly.   For detail work, you'd need a really big sculpt or some pretty precise custom tools, and a lot of patience.

The idea of doing stone with a chisel is absolutely awe-inspiring to me, must have taken an eternity to knock out a stone sculpt with very basic tools.  One missed strike and it's redesign time.



Anonymous
Not applicable
Went back to some old ideas on wood grain, last night.  g975ascov4a3.png
yltpumk59r5q.png
Still trying to work out a way to make it  usable for practical purposes. The move tool makes nice lines and preserves the contours to some extent (compare grain in forward shoulder area), but any large area, and sometimes smaller areas, are major processing time consumers. 

This is all working large with minimal rez, not sure yet if increasing will help preserve them, or if smoothing will just eat all that. Might be an almost exclusively move tool process, in which case I won't get too far with this, outside of making picture frames or something.  Smoothing absolutely obliterates the grain details at this resolution (as you can see in the face). Trying to work out some shortcuts, or maybe just use a lot of smaller layers and merge as needed. 

Could well be that my machine just doesn't have the chops to handle what I'm trying to do here, at least at this scale, but I think I'm going to try and wade through it for a bit today.  Alternative might be to fake it with paint and just work the surface areas, but I'm not positive that will fly either.   Was able to make things work, when I did the bow, but that was a much smaller total volume, and I'm not sure that I remember exactly how I solved it on that one.

Anyhow, if all goes well, and I don't get overwhelmed with lag frustration during setup, might have a more complete sculpt later today.  As much as I'd like to do another carving, I don't think that technique will cut it for this material, so every tool is on the table. 

Anonymous
Not applicable
Alright, slow going here building up the bulk.  Move tool is pretty unstable, especially when large chunks are moved.  Subjectively, seems that the particle breaks and working towards the boundary boxes increases that.  Smaller moves are pretty safe, but I'm basically doing a quick save after every major move, since I'm getting a crash on every second or third try.  Using inflate and smooth to cut down on the particle breaks helped a bit, but not enough.   Thing to do, I'm pretty sure is to define as much of the base area as possible using initial clay placement rather than try to create area using inflate and move.   May just switch back to block making to finish out the area I want to work on.

By contrast, the feathers, where the area was basically defined, and didn't require large moves, went really fast and smoothly.

So not a whole lot of progress, but maybe enough to get back to sculpting.  Pretty sure that this one is going to be heavily reliant on the move tool, since that seems to be the easiest way to keep some of the granularity intact.  Will work on it a bit further and decide if I need to go back to square one, and really do the infrastructure before the sculpt, or if I'm far enough into it, that I can just move forward.  See how patient I feel.  Have some ideas about increasing the visibility of the grain, but the ship has probably sailed on that, for this sculpt.
ma570hsr57u5.png


P3nT4gR4m
Consultant
That is looking insanely cool. Not quite sure I'm getting your method or why it's causing problems but looking forward to you figuring it out then maybe posting a tutorial?

Anonymous
Not applicable
Thanks, glad you like it.  On page two of this thread there's a tree chunk, you should check that out.

I will probably do a tutorial at some point, if I can figure out the technical side of it.  Can capture the screen using an external recorder, but that pulls a fair amount of processing power.  Last time I tried, had issues with internal recording, but that might be fixed now.  Running a windows7 machine, and that seems to limit the options some as far as what my graphics card will do, although I haven't dug into that too deeply. 

At any rate, probably better if I understand the creation  process itself more fully, before I try to explain it to other people as a tutorial. 

LZoltowski
Champion
I love how experimental, explorative and raw your work is, very nice ... pushing to the edge.
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Be kind to one another 🙂

Anonymous
Not applicable


I love how experimental, explorative and raw your work is, very nice ... pushing to the edge.


Thanks!  Goal is to understand the tools I'm working with, completely.  I see something or notice something, I want to try it, figure out what it's capable of, then figure out what that means if its used as the basis of a sculpt, whether finished or a sketch.  At some point, I figure I'll synthesize all of that.  After I work out these techniques, I'll probably take a deep dive into another figure sculpt.  Kinda want to tackle that Rodin thing, but my calendar is going to get crowded here pretty quick.  My focus tends to shift gears like that, but right now, I'm fascinated with materials, so that has to run its course.  A billion things to learn, just in medium.  On towards summer, I'm planning on doing some serious exploration of a renderer, substance painter, or maybe unity, for now every spare minute goes to medium. 

Just too much fun being in VR, I could practically live there, as long as I have good music playing...  If oculus is kind enough to drop some powerful new tools in, I may never leave.
 

Anonymous
Not applicable
Sculpt is probably finished.  Can't get past the crashes.   Tried to duplicate it, so I could slice it to work on a smaller area.  Successfully cloned, but too much memory (apparently) to do anything past that point, bumped the sculpt get a timer, undo the bump, another timer.   Put the erase tool  on, timer.  Erase, attempt, locks up.  Might take one more shot at it with the cut tool, but my expectations aren't high.