THE HEAD
01 START THE HEAD BLOCK IN ZBRUSH
I start with a blobby Dynamesh sculpt to look for an idea for the head. Since the premise is to work without a plan and keep it under three hours, I keep this as loose as possible at first but also fast. Then I see what my subconscious will produce under these conditions. I consider this part of blocking/ concepting like reading a Rorschach test. The more you push and pull the sculpt, the more different ideas you start to see.
02 SOMETHING EMERGES
Pulling from various mental images and using intuition, I come up with something. In this step I define the major features. I’m pulling out ears with the Snake Hook brush using Sculptris mode then Dynameshing again. I’m constantly switching between brushes with one-stroke keyboard shortcuts to keep the process fluid without having to look at the interface. I cut shapes for lips and major folds in the skin. I also define the sharper bony structure around the eyes. I was picturing this character as something confusing you might see in a fever dream.
03 ADD EYEBALLS AND GRAMOPHONE
I’m now cutting in secondary forms into the skin and adding ridges. I made new holes around the muzzle for what is to become two additional sets of eyes for a total of six. I added hard-surface modelled tiny gramophones as ears coming out of an opening under the other bigger ears.
04 DETAIL FINER FORMS
The next step was to add wrinkling, and resolve some of the interaction between the skin and the skeleton like ridges underneath. I added four more eyes. The bigger one that was in the last step can be interpreted as forehead orifices of some kind, while the two new sets of eyes below it can be seen as the main eyes. Although, I made the orifice ones much bigger so it can be possibly misinterpreted at first as the main eyes on this head. I also
refined some of the drooping skin like formations on top of the head.
05 CALLOUTS
It’s always important to be constantly looking at references. Although for this exercise, one of the ideas was to not look at reference at all and just freeform it from visual memory. While working from my mental library I drew from these inspirations:
• Pig ears. They’re always pointed and folded in interesting ways.
• Gio Nakpil’s shape design. Piece titled ‘Alien’. Forms folding on forms.
• The Sarlacc pit from Star Wars for the eyes.
• H. R. Giger-inspired ribs.
• Gramophone as a hearing aid. Very vivid mental image from Wild Wild West. When I finished the sculpt, upon reflection I realised I might have put that part in due to some loss of my hearing I had recently. The subconscious at work.
06 HAND IT OFF
For the final step, I cut only the last part of the model as a slice, where it will be used as a starting point for the next artist. This keeps it a mystery so we don’t see what each other are working on. The arrow indicates the direction the neck travels so that when we bring the pieces in together to connect them they all line up.