WIP Greek Pair fighting

[ChaosCossack]

Awesome!!!
I like how you have him "climbing" the Giant's leg to get elevation for the strike.

Getting a leg up on the enemy

Colin

 

[Ethan]

Finally some good progress! I have spent the last probably 15 hours of sculpting, trying to learn how to sculpt dynamic motion. I probably started the anatomy on the Giant over again 5 times but I think I finally have a good base. As it stands I have the anatomy down as he would be large but still pretty thin. I think this is best so I can then add fatty pockets and extra skin as necessary. I have also added the base shapes for some of his costume. Now I can get a good idea of how he will look. Next is to continue working anatomy and start getting the details down for these cloths.

 

[ChaosCossack]

Really coming together beautifully.... well animated... not in the least bit stiff

Cheers

Colin

 

[RKapuaala]

This is really good Ethan. While I'm a far cry from mastering sculpting myself, I do have on criticism and that is the position of the Giants head. In my younger days I used to spar having been trained in Karate at an early age by a family friend who was a black belt. Although Achilles has a leg up on the giant, the Giant being a seasoned combatant would most definitely still be looking Achilles in the eyes and not down at his ankle or something.
I've seen this in classical sculpture too where the two figures have unbreakable eye contact and I think it makes the piece look more dynamic,,, but again, I'm no expert.

 

[Ethan]

Thanks RK! I agree with you fully. Right now as far as head positioning I am trying to decide between the Giant (Boagrius) having the dead glaxed look, staring off into the distance; since the sword will already be inserted into his heart from the shoulder. Or, as you suggest; have them with eyes locked upon each other.

So it has been a while since I've posted! I have probably re-sculpted Boagrius 5 times over the last two weeks in an attempt to both learn dynamic muscle structure as well as fall in love with the pose. Yesterday I finally made some great progress on the muscles but after I got home my brother who also is a professional digital artist, mentioned using a website maximo.com to take my nice base mesh and professionally rig the character for movement, saving me the time in rigging it myself as well as the struggle with proportions being out of sync and landmarks being destroyed. We are pretty slow at work this week so I ran the program this morning and was amazed at the results! I brought the rigged character into my 3D program of choice 3DS Max, and posed the characters with prop weapons etc. in just a couple hours. I am very pleased with the results and spent the last few hours blocking out the structure on Boagrius. This time I have a lot more knowledge of how the muscles work and it wasn't hard to bring him to life.

In the images you will see the base posed mesh of Achilles and you can see it is much less distorted than my previous pictures, also the arms and back of Boagrius are much better proportioned and the muscles are in their correct positions now it is just a matter of finishing the block out of muscles and then adding skin and fat layers as needed. I purposely left both head in their neutral positions because the rig did distort this section. I will either sculpt two separate heads and join them to the bodies or attempt to sculpt on the model and pose after. The same will go for the hands, it's much easier to just attach a separate hand than to work with it in position.

I am going to go with as close to the style of Carpeaux, Ugolino and His Sons, is a great example of the type of sculpture I am going with.

 

[RKapuaala]

Looking good Nathan. Since the sword is already in then I would suggest that Achilies be looking down on his foe and I think you are right the Giant should be looking up startled and dazed as he realizes he is going to do,,, possibly eyes and faces tilted subtly towards the sky.

 

[garyhiggins]

Hi Ethan, can I make a couple of points?
First to get a feeling of movement make the posing of the figures as off balance and extreme as you can get away with, to establish the character and motivation of the two figures, do some work on the faces at an early stage so you know where you're going with them. As an idea on source material, try " the Greek Myths" by Robert Graves, at the very least It's a great read.
Best wishes, Gary.

 

[garyhiggins]

P.S. the middle of the three figures in the injustice pic is ludicrous!!!

 

[Ethan]

Thanks guys, I will take your advice into account to be sure! Now is definitely the time for any other posing so when I get back on it this evening I will look into making the posing a bit more extreme. I am trying to pay attention to how the figures will mount onto a base as well so as much as possible I would like to stray from having to integrate a metal post in Boagrius, to be able to hold the two figures so balance will be crucial. Having said that, the two figures are still going to have to be naturally unbalanced to represent movement as you said Gary, so it's going to be tricky!

 

[Ethan]

So... it's been a while since any updates but I was a bit occupied for the last week and a half. Had to see about a girl! The last few days especially have been a wonderful wild ride but I promise I will be sculpting again hopefully tonight! Our new printer is still delayed so I know we won't be doing prints until July but I have a tendency toward procrastination so I need to hunker down and get this finished! Anyways, happy sculpting and painting!

 

[garyhiggins]

Hi Ethan, I can sympathise over the procrastination thing, sculpts sit on my window shelf for weeks and months waiting to be noticed again.
Best wishes, Gary.

 

[ChaosCossack]

If it's a woman getting in the way of your sculpting, well... things could be worse. Champagne problems.


Colin