Thanks Wyatt 
But His Post was water off a duck’s back. Perhaps he had a bad day and inadvertantly took it out on my thread, or maybe it was on purpose. Regardless, as it turns out, I AM an amateur, and participating in these challenges is giving me great practice and, with all the people who participate, they are a valuable pool of instruction and inspiration.
That being said, Here is an update on Papa Smurf. I’ll work him a little more tonight and hopefully get him done.
-Rage
This is sick, How can Gargamel look like the baddie now, he looks so sweet compared to them 
That’s a child’s nightmare allright…
Very nice job so far, completely twists my childhood memories!
Lol Fictis.
I’ll take this opportunity to clarify, as it seems that most people view my smurfs as evil (and rightfully so, I guess).
The idea behind this entry is to extract the nature of the smurfs from their appearance. When I started the redesign, I imagined what little Blue forest gnomes would look like if we were to find them in our world, in our forests. They are born of the earth and live so close to it, with the other critters such as bugs and rodents and whatnot. They live in mushrooms which generally grow from decay and feces. What I came up with are these little Smurfs I’ve been modeling. Their genuine “goodness” will be portrayed in the finished diorama, I promise, but for now they are ugly little forest dwellers. 
-Rage
This is my first attempt on modeling cloth so be gentle. Some forms I like and others I don’t, so I’ll most porbably keep this Ztool and smooth and sculpt, etc until I find something I like. But for now, I don’t have much time and there’s still 7 more smurfs to go. I’m thinking I will bring them all to mid-level detail like Papa and Chef, then refine them later if I have time.
I would love to hear tips and tricks for hand modeling cloth, so please feel free. Even the tiniest thing would be helpful. I know nothing.
-Rage
It looks way too random. There is no flow. I can only suggest you stop using your imagination and start looking some references.
Super Creepy Smurfs!!!
I would agree the cloth is not folding naturally. I would look up some refs as well.
Ditto what they said.
Cloth will go smooth at a flex like the top of the knee and then bunch up in the fold behind and around. Right now the knee is just as wrinkled as everything else making it look like the cloak has been in the closet for a while. Plus with flowing things like robes use long smooth strokes till you get to the crease areas.
Awesome, thanks guys.
I was going to move on, but I’ll take a couple hours tonight to rework the robe.
-Rage
I’ve done some research and I’ve put together a collage of different images of robes that had elements that I like. I have more reference, but can’t post them as they come from 3d.sk and I payed for them.
-Rage
Main thing I learned from Burne Hogarth’s ‘Dynamic Wrinkles and Drapery’ book, find your anchor points (joints, bends, knots, buttons etc.) and the folds and wrinkles will emanate from there.
Wyatt’s suggestion is gold! I have that book as well and it helps a lot when trying to create acceptable cloth manually. Axiomatic posted a link to a ZB cloth-sculpting tutorial in his thread. Here’s the direkt link.
I hardly find your smurf rendition evil-looking. Why the heck to people always associate cute with good and “unusual” etc with evil!?! Sure beats me, but that’s the nature of humankind, I guess! :curious:
Cheers!
Thanks a lot guys. I REALLY appreciate it. Tonight I went to the gnomonology sight and purchased Richard Smith’s Sculpting Clothing. For $15 I figured it would be a worthwhile investment. It is Very helpful and Now I’m ready to give it another go :wip:
The link you gave me Felix is also really informative, however the material he sculpts is practically the complete opposite of the Robe Papa Smurf is wearing. While the techniques, I’m sure, are the same, My mind has a really hard time making the transformation.
Tomorrow I’ll head to Chapter’s and see if they have Burne Hogarth’s Dynamic Wrinkles and Drapery. Thanks a lot again!
-Rage
Here’s a ZB grab of my progress. I decided to add a sash to break up the strokes and I think its working for its intended purpose. Cloth is a nightmare, but also quite fun because of its organic nature.
-Rage
edit: Lol I must be tired. After posting this I tried to manipulate it instead of within Zbrush.
And this is how my night’s work ended. I’m much happier with this result. I still have a little bunching up at the knee that I will iron out later.
-Rage
Much better. Now think about the texture of the folds. In my mind, and I could be way off, the folds are quite large and bumpy. This makes me think of very thick or coarse material. That may be exactly what you want, IDK. Considering he’s only a few inches tall I suppose anything would look thick.
Thanks Wyatt. I was indeed going for a coarser material, but you are right that anything would seem coarse at that size.
I did a few more minor edits, sculpted the feet, randomized and textured the staff, finished the cowl. Won’t bother posting wip image for that. I then moved on to blocking out Jokey Smurf’s attire. Here are the results:
I’ll eventually make his jester hat white, and color his tights in a checkerboard scheme.
-Rage
did they show this in cartoonetwork? i was born in the 90’s so I don’t know or remember seeing them. They look funny and weird though. The old guy kinda reminds me of master Yoda
I don’t know about the cartoon network. I live in Canada and we never got the channel, plus I was quite a bit older when we got cable for the first time ( we lived in the country so it was not available for a while). My fondest memories of the Smurfs, though, were when I used to watch it in french when I was a little dude myself. Basically, they are little blue forest gnomes that embody everything that is good and happy. They happen to live close to The Evil Wizard Gargamel and his cat Azrael, And seem to always solve their problems by innocence and naivety rather than hardcore action like the other cartoons of it’s time. Rewatching the episodes at this age has actually been quite wonderful. The subliminal moral education that is portrayed through the characters is quite incredible for it’s time, dealing with acceptance of others as they are, being tolerent and even open to changes. It’s quite incredible, really, considering they made their first appearance (in a magazine, I believe) in the 50’s.
Thanks for taking interest, and lol when I was done “the old dude” (Papa Smurf) I found he looked like yoda too.
-Rage
yeah kinda got interested in it. Because it’s blank in my head :D. I’ve found out alot of popular cartoons here like He-man or Silverhawk and of course Smurfs :). I just noticed though you kinda modified their faces into more matured smurfs 
I think it was not that widely released in the US… It originally is a french series (Belgium to be correct) that we, french canadians did see as kids… Vive les Schtroumpfs!
By the way, they do look like Norwegian Trolls, witch are not systematically bad creatures, I did not mean they where evil, but that they looked meaner than Gargamel and certainly twisted allright