HMC#20: Expressions - Young Bale

[RobertoOrtiz]

And for finishing all 15 ON TIME you will get a special mention on the voting thread.

-R

[menthol]

Pal, pal,

phew, big gratzy! Seeing you here, doing such expressions changed pretty much how I look at things. So, I should thank you for that, I think you know how these turned out so no need to say it billion times

For the setup, I think it is kinda dark, high fall-off( I think its called like that ) and you might loose some of the details, well if you don’t loose any details then, it looks great to go

Cheers, pal!

[RageOfAges]

Thanks for all the replies, especially the crits regarding the concentrating face. I’ve reworked that and I’ll post it shortly.

rasmus - Thanks a lot for that man, I’ll revisit the yawn before the deadline with your crit in mind.

I’ve actually got all 15 done, but I think I might work them a little bit more before posting them up. For now, I’ve been working on a setup for the final renders. I’m going for a “cast drawing” kind of style, so I don’t think I’ll stick in any bloom or DOF or any of that jazz.

The tricky thing is keeping the face as expressive as it looks in zbrush. Anyway, any feedback on this before I go ahead and render the other expressions would be useful, as ever.

What software are you using? This looks like a mental ray render, and it seems to me like you need more final gather rays. It also looks like you need a rim light and some bounce cards opposite your lights to get better shading in the tiny cracks. Then your displacement should look much more like your Ztool. These are just render issues, though. The model looks good and the displacement looks great as well. I think you just need the right tools make it all POP.

-Rage

[LordMcGoat]

Hey guys, cheers for the responses

Regarding the darkness thing, that’s kind of the point - it’s this chiaroscuro look I’m going for:

http://stephenbauman.com/images/cast_drawing1.jpg
http://www.rickardljungkvist.se/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/castdrawing3.jpg

There’s a rim light in there at the moment, but it’s subtle because in reality you’d never really put a rim light in there, as you’d want to lose those edges in the dark. Losing detail isn’t a big concern, as these sculpts haven’t really been about the detail, but of course with the combination of the high key lighting and the lack of specular there’s quite a bit of stuff that you lose in the render.

Anyhow, I’ll go over the renders (@rage - yea they’re in MR) and post up some models this evening after work.

[RageOfAges]

This is just a suggestion for your renders Chris. You could set up a light, in the area of your rim light, and link it to a bounce card only in front of your model with a high ambient value. It might help you get a darker background and highly exposed foreground like in those images you posted, which were very cool, btw.

Cheers

-Rage

[d8D]

Man I love all the details you add to every expression. Especially “Fear”, is freaking amazing! Masterful work.

[LordMcGoat]

Ok bit of an image dump this, but here we go. Final expressions. I never thought I’d say those 2 words together

Pride

Anger

This was initially going to be “annoyed”, since I already have anger. But the more I sculpted, the angrier he got, so I suppose it makes sense to have this as “angry” and the “anger” I’ve already done as “rage”.

Attentive (Concentration)

Not a new one, but I reworked the mouth area after the feedback here.

The final two I’ve done renders for, to experiment with the setup more -

Love

Despair

Bale cries very convincingly in that film, which was great. Really good little actor. He just wasn’t quite sad enough for my liking.

@Joel - I think what you’re describing is fairly similiar to what I’ve got. As it stands there’s an area light as the key light, to get soft shadows like the reflector you suggested would, a spot light behind as rim, and IBL as fill.

[RageOfAges]

magnifiscent. despair is incredible, my friend. :buttrock:

-Rage

[japetus]

Amazing job! Despair is heart wrenching.

[StevenEgan]

Yeah, despair is brilliant!.. really nice work on all of these!

[StephanRODRIGUEZ]

Amazing work man !! I’m sure Bale would be really moved to see your brilliant work, it’s so realistic.

[TiMrozek]

Man, you really nailed despair! I’ve never felt so bad for a bust, digital or marble! Great work, this thread has been a delight to follow.

[LordMcGoat]

Bosh, I’m done. Now time for sleep (it’s 5 am, since I decided I didn’t want to spend another weekend doing it, I thought I’d stay up to get the renders done. Have since learnt lesson.)

For the sake of completeness, I’m posting the final image with all the expressions on here:

There are larger renders of each, the links are in the submissions thread.

Anyway, I’d like to say how much I’ve appreciated the kind words and useful crits from all of you guys throughout this challenge. It really made such a difference, and made the whole thing a lot more enjoyable. I’d have appreciated it more if one of you bastards had spotted the fact that I’d sculpted 16 instead of 15 expressions, as I realised just as I was getting the images together to submit. But I suppose nobodys perfect

Cheers,
Chris

[uinku]

You really captured his likeness. Very nice work. Glad to have competed with work of this caliber.

[TiMrozek]

Congratulations on the on-time completion. This was quite a project. You’ve done some seriously great work here.

[TyroneMaddams]

Chris congratulations on completing and your beautiful work!!

He looks so adorable :love::love:

[RageOfAges]

Glad you got it done, Chris. Your renders are looking good, too. I’m glad you were able to achieve the look you were going for. Hope to see you around in future challenges.

-Rage

[BrettSinclair]

Chris. Awesome finish my friend. Your thread has had me stressing big time! Your work pushed me to try better mine. So I thank you for that. It was an absolut pleasure competing with you.
Cheers,
Brett

[StevenEgan]

Yeah, nice work… these turned out great!

Really nice work!

[polymaster]

my goodness :buttrock: . you are LOTC
i know nothing is perfect but i can call it perfect!