HOW DO I SCULPT ANATOMICALLY CORRECT HUMAN EARS?
James Simmons, Winchester
It is a well-known fact that you cannot get better at something without many hours of practice. Some things can come easy to us and we fall into a trap thinking that the rest should come with it at no cost at all. We might be great at sculpting eyes or clothes, but lack in other areas. Just because we can model a fantastic Ferrari, does not mean we will definitely succeed with a complete character. It may turn out, and it usually does with beginner artists, that it is the little things that become the source of our greatest frustrations. We end up spending way too much time trying to figure out why the things that should be so simple, just do not look right. Sometimes it takes a very long time to find out we have been doing something wrong the whole time. On the other hand, we could be nitpicking details that do not really matter, yet ignoring the bigger forms that destroy the look.
When it comes to modelling characters, there is a great amount of artistic freedom driven by creativity. We can create just about anything, but to make it work, to make sense to the audience, we need some boundaries and rules. The more realistic look we want to achieve, the more attention we have to pay to anatomy. It is not always fun, but even Picasso had to learn the correct forms first before developing his unique, bizarre style.
One of those little details that could bring your whole piece down, are ears. What’s so special about ears that draws so much attention? Well, we see them every day, and that is a problem because we are so used to those features that we can quickly notice if there is something odd about them. Yet we seem to forget all about it when we sculpt them, and we need reference. Let’s explore how we can sculpt anatomically correct ears in Zbrush.