HMC #16- Face Hugger W.I.P.

#1

So I’ve decided to stretch my limits and do this challenge. The talent here is amazing and I’m hoping that if I push myself I might someday be as good as some of the people I see here :slight_smile:

I was surprised to see that while there are a few alien and predator entries already no one’s doing the lovely Face Hugger!

Here are the reference photos I’ve been able to find so far, unfortunately most of them seem to be fan variations and replicas, I’ve been watching Aliens today trying to comb through it for some better shots of the face hugger but it shows up so rarely it’s hard to get some good reference. If anyone has any good reference would love the help though!

Here are some of the images

And here’s my low poly mesh because I prefer to do things this way instead of Zspheres

#2

Hey, nice choice, i have the ‘gigers alien’ book kicking about somewhere, i’ll have a look see if there is a good reference in it.

#3

Great idea to make the “Hugger”. I look foreward for this one. :wink:

A good start as well here. Just one thing. The centralpiece, where the “fingers” emerges, is far more broad. Allways remember, that Giger had two opend hands as an initial form in mind as to be seen and to read in “Gigers Alien” book, speakerwizard kindly mentioned already.

So think of two hands and their proportions. Don´t aim for a shape of a spider as the form now does.

I add here two reference pictures of my Facehugger Modelkit. That one is very movie accurate and lifesize. Don´t mind the yellow squares here, they where just reference points for putting the single pictures back together in PS.

I hope it helps.

Topside

Underside

Thumbs up and good luck.

Cheers

Markus

#4

Speakerwizard(Andrew)~ That’s great! I’m going to be going to the library tomorrow to try and find the Winston Effect, I’ll look for Giger’s Alien as well

Lcousta(Markus)~ That reference you posted is amazing, I think I’ll be using that for my reference. Also thank you for the background info, I’ve never really delved into Giger’s creative process for the initial ideas behind these creatures, the bit about the hands is very interesting! (Though I am now realizing I made 10 arms instead of 8 so I’ll go fix that and tweak up my model a little). I will definitely be looking at my knuckles etc for reference on how to make the joints they do have very finger like qualities, I suppose for grabbing faces!

Update coming in a bit!

#5

I never noticed that before, that’s pretty cool. (I’m holding my 2 hands up now making a facehugger) :smiley:

#6

So tweaked/redone low poly mesh. It’s still not looking very hand like, but once I bump up the detail a little I’ll start to add that sloping arc that occurs on your hand from index (first leg in this case) to pinky (bottom most leg).

Oh and continuing with the hand thing some random trivia I realized when I did what wyatt just did- The “face hugger” you can make with your hands basically puts your hands together in a kung fu hand form called “monkey presents the fruit”. Like the face hugger, it’s not a very nice thing to get hit with

#7

That is looking much better though. Keep it up.

#8

This will be a awsome HUGGER!!

Very good progress. The mesh looks much better now. Bring it on! Thumbs up!!

#9

Ooh, I made a face hugger a while back too, they are a lot of fun. It looks like your off to a great start, good luck!

#10

Wyatt, Locusta, SheriffNotic- Thanks for the encouragement! Unfortunately the few days have been very busy, but here’s some preliminary sculpting. I’m going to work on it some more after I unwind a little from work. This is what I’ve got so far.

#11

Yea, that’s coming right along, looking good =]

#12

Looooks very goood :thumbsup: You will nail it, I knew it :wink:

Just remind, that all “fingers” are actually the same size and length. So it would be good to tweak the last couple (witch are nearly horizontal seen from top) a bit.

As well as the baggy, testicle like sacks. They need a bit more volume.

I watch this one very closely. All the best.

Markus

#13

Nice work here tasp

As well as the baggy, testicle like sacks. They need a bit more volume.

and indeed… remember that this beastie is just hands with a spine tail and human reproductive organs… like all geiger stuff very sex oriented. Make sure you get that while detailing.

are you going to pose the thing? make an egg perhaps?

Cheers!

#14

Tim- Thanks for the encouragement

Locusta- Thanks for the continuing tips for what I’m missing, it’s hard to continuously look at this with fresh eyes. Sometimes I get an idea in my head about how it looks and lock onto that and begin to ignore my reference, so thanks again for helping me out!

Matsman- Working on the “sexy” parts right now actually. Didn’t like how the mouth attaching parts looked so I’m going to redo them. I’m definitely going to attempt to pose this when I’m done and maybe have a few of them and a cluster of eggs time permitting. This will be challenging as my knowledge of how to pose things is pretty limited to beginner type stuff. I’m going to try and use the simple posing tools of Zbrush and hope it all works out.

So here’s what I’m looking at now, I’ve tried to make the legs a little more finger like (best view of that is in the lateral and angled views) and I’ve fattened up the air sacs at the base. The overlapping plates that go down the tail are giving me some trouble, I may have to tweak my base mesh slightly in order to have the geometry work properly but for now I’m just going to focus on the main body. The underside will be my focus for the next bit.

#15

So changed quite a few things in the last week, most of them minor but if you compare the previous pics you should be able to see how they add up. The legs look better, more finger-like, and I think the underside is coming along nicely even though I’m sort of going astray from the reference. The ref locusta posted was great and has helped me a lot but I’m having problems making out just how the underside looks because of the monotone coloring. Let me know what you think I’ll have a pose worked up soon and plan to try and maybe use ZBrushes painting capabilities to paint it (never done that before so hope it turns out ok). Planning to put this down for a day and work on an egg or two tomorrow and then pick it back up for more tweaks and (hopefully) finishing touches on the 'hugger before working on some sort of final composition.

#16

looking nice so far. though ide drop down those spine ridges just a tad. i think what you had in the first revision was slightly closer to the brief.
good luck!

#17

Nice job. Great attitude going into this challenge too, thats really what its about.

#18

lightcache- Thanks for the compliment and the crit, the bony ridges are what are giving me the hardest time right now. I spent a some time playing around with them today and wasn’t able to get something I liked, I have a new approach I’m going to try tomorrow though and I’ll keep at it.

Sirhcnait- Thanks, looking at the people who put their work up on this forum is very intimidating but since I want to someday be as good as some as those people I figure I might as well attempt the same projects they are. I’m hoping to get better as I go along and hone my skills so far the progress is coming although slowly.

Soooo as I mentioned the bony ridge is giving me trouble, I frustrated scrapped the changes I had made and decided to take another crack at it tomorrow. But I did build an egg and worked out a quick pose to use as an idea for a possible final composition. I’m still getting the hang of ZBrush’s painting and posing system it’s pretty useful, but a little wierd to get used to.

I also have a question regarding the transpose lines for moving/scaling/rotating. I was trying to make a composition with several eggs, but after I added them as a subtool I had issues moving them around on the base I had set up. I was drawing a transpose line from the very top to the very bottom of the eggs and centering it but when I would move them more than a little the verts would start to tear and stretch back to the original point the egg was when I added it as a subtool. Does anyone know why this is happening? I’ll be doing research on my own on the Pixologic forums but any insight would be appreciated. Thanks!

-LOOK OUT IT’S JUMPING FOR YOUR FACE! :argh:

Painted version with my pose ideas for final renders

#19

Hej! Nice work with the egg!

If there was anything to criticise on for me it would be that I find the beast (legs especially) not really bony enough but that might also be the shader which seems rather soft.
Like the topside better than the underside which isn’t vagina-ey enough yet and it seems to me there should/ could be more of a detail connection between the legs and inside… there is a band where nothing is going on right now.

But I have to admit that I say this without any ref present so that is coming from my memory about these things… I wouldn’t claim to be a fan or that the movies all used the same facehugger model with the same detail. So take it with a pinch of salt.

Good modelling!

#20

This is looking real smooth stuff !! good work !

I am not totally agree with the previous post, this creature has some soft fleshy feel in it, not that solid bony structure(according to the movie one). It’s a child like thing who’s bones will also be soft and the skin is specially very soft. May be you can just pinch the legs skin little bit, like in this image -

http://www.bay12replicas.co.uk/My%20Collection/Face_Hugger.jpg

Also, for ground - I will recommend to make that some kind of displaced creepy area by adding some mesh here and there with some flesh hanging down from egg. Just my idea :shrug: