ZBrushWorkshops - Anatomy of the Face for Artists

ZBrushWorkshops - Anatomy of the Face for Artists

Sculpting the face is hard, really hard. However, it can be made easier and that is what this workshop sets out to do. I created this workshop from years of banging my head against a wall and trying to understand why my sculptures just didn't look right. Years. It left a flat spot on my forehead, actually.

The good news here is that all of those years of banging my head finally paid off. Not only can I sculpt a human face quicker and more reliably then before but I can teach you.
This workshop is filled with quick, spontaneous schematic drawings to help you understand the form of the human face and how the architecture of planes all work together. It also includes quick mini-lectures to help you understand the terminology of facial anatomy. Most importantly, though, it walks you step-by-step through the process of sculpting the face. I dare say this is the most comprehensive facial anatomy workshop out there.

You will learn:
Face: Landmarks
Sculpting the face is like getting lost in the woods. You know you're surrounded by trees. You know what a tree is and you know you're in the forest. You just don't know how to make an sense of it that will get you somewhere. This workshop is designed to provide you the map you need to get yourself out of trouble and give you back a sense of control when sculpting the face. Go ahead. Jump in. We've got a lot of ground to cover.

Skull: Proportions
In this lecture we look at a facial grid system to help us place the features of our model and make short work of what is a difficult task. Keep in mind that there is no one perfect system and that the goal is to begin to internalize these proportions so you can create the facial grid in your mind's eye without all the hard work seen in this lecture. Good luck!

Skull: Shape
Once you have the proportional guides stowed safely in your brain its time to start sculpting. This lecture shows you how I start from a simple sphere and end up with a basic humanoid shaped head. This is just the beginning but every step is covered. If you're advanced you might want to give this a quick look and get started. However, I advise everyone, no matter what their skill level is, to watch it and see if there is anything new to learn.

Facial Grid
Before I start to create the bony masses of the skull I find it important to place the facial grid directly onto my sculpt via Polypainting. This will provide the framework for the skull underneath and allow me to immediately block out things like the orbit of the eyes.

Skull: Eye
I usually start with the orbit of the eye. Its a great anchor for the rest of the sculpting. One of the common problems people run into is making the orbits of the eye too big. When following this lecture make sure to work INSIDE of the guides. The guides tend to be a bit large and really show the largest it can be. Skull: Cheeks
Let's review our landmarks and see if we can get into a bit more detail. I find that knowing the language of anatomy is incredibly important to understanding the form. Once something has a name I find it much easier to remember it and to recreate it.

Skull: Inner Eye
The frontal process of the maxilla was the single biggest lesson I had to learn to start sculpting better faces. The problem I had is that no one talked about the frontal process. It wasn't in any major anatomy books or if it was it was buried. I had to find it will digging through Grey's Anatomy.

Skull: Maxilla
The maxilla is the center of our face. It contains the nose. It separates the cheeks. It contains the upper lip and it sits directly below the eyes. Knowing the architecture of the center of the face is critical to getting good results when sculpting the face.

Skull: Upper Brow
In this lecture, I show you how to start with a simplified upper brow and slowly add all the subtle plane changes. I really enjoy how this lecture slows builds the complexity of the brow. Its easy to jump in and start making a mess but my goal is to simplify the entire process into an easy to follow reciepe of steps that gives you the power to recreate what I've done at will.

Skull: Back
Who pays attention to the back of the skull, right? Well, your sculpts suffer if you don't. Sculpting, they say, is like creating 360 drawings so you can't let any view suffer from neglect.

Mandible
The mandible has some important and distinctive aspects to it that will improve our sculpting if we are aware of them. Teeth
You might not be interested in sculpting the teeth. They are certainly a detail that I would have missed but this time I really wanted to understand them and make sure I know as much as I could. Well, it turns out there is a lot to learn from the teeth.