Nia - Sculpt

 17-21/01/22 - Week 1

This week I have started my sculpt for Nia. I first created a couple of groups of images to help me with the style and concepts that I was going for. I wanted to portray a more semi-realistic style, which encludes more realistic proportion whilst still acknowleging its stylised roots. I found these styles were very smooth but counteracted with some slight emphasis on points and included longer arms and legs.

Over the first day I was able to make some good progress, this included getting in the face and some of the block out for the body. I struggled with the face a lot, especially the eyes as I wasn't getting the proportions correct and it just wasn't looking like the reference. I was nearing something that looked correct but I made good progress over the first day and was aware that coming back to it later would be beneficial. 

The next day, I assessed what was wrong with the face in some more detail, I found the eyes were much too big and the face in general lacked structure which I was able to achieve by using a variety of pinch brushes. I also got in the eyelashes and brows to help me understand the issues with the proportions of the face too. To help with the semi-realistic style I got a basic female body sculpt from lightbox and used this to check my anatomy as this needed to be somewhat correct.

I then finished the body, I needed to work a bit into this since some of the material is sheer so you will be able to see the skin underneath. I also created a quick base hair model which really helped me to understand how accurate my sculpt was to the concept, I think I am happy with it. I then sculpted the skull knee assets and applied them to the sculpt.

To start with the clothing, I found some boot examples and based these on her wedge-like shoes which I added some small details to whilst also trying to stay true to the concept. I also sculpted the leotard and boots with there necessary details added in. I didn't want to go too over the top with the stylisation on this sculpt, so there is a lot more subtlety in the boots and leotard than there would have if this was a stylised piece.

To finish her off for this moment, I added in a base for the sheer material on her arms and then added the detailing on the tops of the boots. This was created by masking out an area on a cylinder and then trying to fix the topology as best as possible. The jewellery was mainly easy and was just a case of creating shapes and placing them in the right shape or spot. With the cape this was similar, creating a base mesh and duplicating it. For the future of the cape I am unsure how stylised I want to go with the feathering since I could make it very stylised like on the concept or try to play with alphas for it.

Overall, a super progressive week that will follow into sculpting the boatswain. I hope that the approaches I took were well thought out and will be beneficial for my texturing since there was many wash I could tackle the lace/pattern work.

Here is my plan for the Boatswain next week:

I also want to, as a stretch goal, try to make some crows for Nia since this would look really nice for my presentation, but I am unsure if I'll manage this.