Yeah I agree completely. I like retopo when conceptualizing and sketching, as you have no real clear idea what the result will be.
But when you know what you want from the beginning I always find a little extra effort into a solid base mesh with good topology saves a lot of time in the long run.
-rage
RageOfAges: Retopo is a real monotonous drag, if you ask me, but it is the faster and more intuitive workflow, unfortunately. lol I really like polymodeling, since it has something rather meditative about it. But for concept sculpting nothing else works better than starting with a basic mesh and later drawing a good topo on top, I agree.
Anyways, here’s my final base mesh:
I ended up sculpting a little more on higher levels to provide me with some more landmarks for edgeflow and then editing the ZSphere mesh on top of it in Topogun. In other words, I did retopo after all. lol There’s still lots of work to be done. The proportions are off and he currently looks more like one of those kids piloting a Gundam or Yoshitsune Miyamoto from Appleseed, than like a seasoned, genius-scientist adult.
Let me know what you think so far.
Cheers!
It does look like a boy right now the head looks to big and the shoulder need to be broader.
Agreed.
The sholders need to be wider, legs a bit longer and head smaller, Shirow san always does small heads on his dudes, cept the cartoony ones.
Many thanks for your input, guys! It’s much valued and appreciated. 
I had a few minutes yesterday and went at him briskly with mostly Transpose and Move, so here's where I'm at right now:
[img]http://i242.photobucket.com/albums/ff104/TheRazorsEdgeStudio/Captain%20Future%20Re-envisioned/baseWiresProportionEdit.jpg[/img]
He's not quite there yet, especially the relation of head to shoulder girdle. This is proving to be a bit tricky, since I don't want to make him the regular, pea-skulled-muscled hero type. He's mostly a somewhat athletic scientist after all and not that huge in the Anime design either, especially considering that he is wearing his armor. I think both Namba and Sakura are probably too buff for this type. The head is still quite a bit too big though, but I think I at least managed to get rid of the dead-on-boyish look of the face and fix the legs (Edit: Jeez, the lower legs still could be longer, or am I wrong?!). I'm going to have to keep working those proportions. lol
Cheers!haha yea, he does look less boyish from your last update…like you said, the big heads giving it away. A great reference for proportions is Andrew Loomis, maybe that might help out…
The reason it looks boyish is cause his head is too big. widening the jaw might help give it a better manly feel. the legs look fine but if you want to check, from the bottom of the crotch to the bottom of the knee should be two head lengths, and from the bottom of the knee to the bottom of the feet should be another two head lengths. awesome mesh!
bludragon88: Thanks a lot for commenting and the Andrew Loomis reference suggestion. Jeez, his drawings are so sweet, its annoying. lol I just love his style. His women are particularly spectacular.
I ended up using actor/bodybuilder Steve Reeves as a very loose real life facial ref, keeping the face slimmer and always trying to capture the Shirow-style. It aint easy, I’m telling ya! 
dAnconia: Many thanks for the compliment on the mesh and the proportion advice. I'll send him over to Maya later, where I'll perform my regular proportion check with a distanceTool and head-approximation spheres. Up 'till now I have just been eyeballing everything in ZB.
Thanks a lot to both of you again for your very valuable input! :)
I had 2 hours to put aside for this yesterday and was able to make some fairly decent headway, I think.
Here's where I'm at right now: ZBrush SubD Level 4
[img]http://i242.photobucket.com/albums/ff104/TheRazorsEdgeStudio/Captain%20Future%20Re-envisioned/animeMaleSculpt_01.jpg[/img]
He's currently at level 4 for a less faceted look, but I sculpted only up to level 3. I'll add some more contour detail, fix some flaws in both contour and silhouette here and there and check/adjust proportions in Maya if needed, but will move on to the hair, armor etc after that.
Whatever issue/flaw you can find in the above image and can point me to is much appreciated.
Cheers!:arteest:I was getting real tired of the bald and eye-less look, so I popped in some spheres for the eyes and got going with the hair before fixing proportions and adding more detail.
Here’s my progress and work-flow for a rough hairstyle concept sculpt:
[img]http://i242.photobucket.com/albums/ff104/TheRazorsEdgeStudio/Captain%20Future%20Re-envisioned/hairRoughConceptSculptProgress.jpg[/img]
For those interested in some details, here's a workflow breakdown:
1. Starting with a sphere primitive, I roughly positioned and scaled it using Transpose and then rotated one pole back to where the hair usually creates a vortex (not sure if that is the right way to call it!?).
2-3. Here I started roughing in a basic shape with Move, Smooth, xSymmetry enabled and one step of subdivision.
4. Laying out the hairstyle was achieved with Move and xSymmetry disabled.
Final Sketch: To arrive here, I subdivided up until I had some decent resolution and then used a modified ClayTubes Brush with LazyMouse enabled to roughly sketch in the hair patterns. I'll probably keep modifying the result and use the mesh later to draw splines or poly strips onto for the final hair.
Its even more apparent now that I still need to age and "season" him quite a bit. I'll try to get that fixed with the next update. But with him looking like that, I am getting some ideas for a Shirow-style side-project. Stay tuned. ;)
Cheers!looking good…i especially like the hair…i know how off putting it can be having no eys and no hair there…
Thanks for posting your workflow on his hair, so thats just a placement for when you will add in the final hair later?
robo3687: Thanks, man! Yeah, no matter how much preach to others and remind myself to size and place eyes properly before beginning to sculpt the head, I always forget it when I’m not working from concept sketches. Ah, well… lol
Maxter: Many thanks! :)
bludragon88: Yeah, this hair-sculpt is only a sketch to help me with the placement of poly-planes or splines. I have huge trouble working with the latter in 3D/persp, so a concept sculpt is a big help. If I wanted to use sculpted geometry, I would retopo this sketch for better poly-flow and then sculpt that to final detail level.
vilsaum3dzeiro: Thanks a lot. I'm glad to have captured your interest. :)
WyattHarris: Thanks, Wyatt. Glad you like it.
Alrighty, here's my next progress image:
[img]http://i242.photobucket.com/albums/ff104/TheRazorsEdgeStudio/Captain%20Future%20Re-envisioned/animeMaleSculpt_02.jpg[/img]
I'd like to think the silhouette is solid enough now, but I need to still add some more contour detail on the forearms and lower legs as well as fix the hands and feet. That should be enough detail to move on to the suit. I'll be taking a layered inside-out approach to develop that. ( For those interested in more workflow detail: His underwear was built from an edited poly-cylinder and then matched to/projected onto the geometry via Maya's Attribute Transfer Tool)
Let me know what you think so far and point me to any flaws you find.
Kanpai!:beer:Got started on the suit:
Nothing special so far, just a base put together from edited body-base parts and the underwear with some additional poly-editing in Maya. I got rid of lots of superfluous edges and made it fairly basic and sculpt-able, since I am not 100% sure what I’ll go for in detail here. I’ll add specific topo once I know a little better where I’m going with this. I also still have some cleanup to do before moving this into ZB.
Cheers!
Great progress and thanks for sharing some of your workflow. When you clean up the suit do you keep the edges from the original flexing areas like the knees and elbows or do you simplify those down?
Keep it up.
Umoc: Thanks a lot for your comment! Now Regarding your question. That depends entirely on the character/production requirements. If I was to cloth-sim the costume, I’d get rid of those edges. If the costume is destined for smooth-binding, as is usually the case with such a body-hugging outfit, I’ll leave 'em where they are, as I am doing here, but probably add fabric fold-specific edges later on. Hope this answers your question sufficiently.
The following image is just a quick addition to yesterday's post:
[img]http://i242.photobucket.com/albums/ff104/TheRazorsEdgeStudio/Captain%20Future%20Re-envisioned/suitSculpt_01.jpg[/img]
After cleaning up some edges, I appended the base-suit as a Subtool to the body-sculpt in ZB and used "Project All" with the areas I did not want to project masked off and a Morph Target stored just in case. Then I hit Inflat (in the Deformation sub-menu) on all axes with 0.2 a couple of times to clear the suit of the underlying body-mesh. With a new Morph Target stored, I'll use this as a base to sculpt the suit details on, probably getting rid of most of the projected detail in the process, but its good to have it there initally.
As usual, any and all comments and suggestions are more than welcome.
Skol!I gotcha. Most definitely answered. I wasn’t really sure about how much cleanup you would do on a form fitting mesh. Makes sense though. It’s coming along nice.
Umoc: Thanks!
I haven't really been able to make much progress, but figured it's time for another picture update, so here's my current status-quo on his armor/uniform:
[img]http://i242.photobucket.com/albums/ff104/TheRazorsEdgeStudio/Captain%20Future%20Re-envisioned/armorWIP_01.jpg[/img]
While trying to figure out the final look Shirow-san might give him, I am still blocking in the major parts of his outfit, either by bringing in base geometry from outside of ZB or creating new geometry via Extract or Retopo. Also, I am procrastinating intensely on getting started with the cloth/fold sculpting. lol
Cheers!