Research – Sculptris

Facial Features and Face Poses:

I've collected various images of people resembling evil and good figures from wide range of media, such as Film, TV, News and regular imaging. I done this to isolate specific features within a hero or villain. For example, heroic figures tend to have broad and solid jaws like the famous superman figure with also the chin up to highlight power and protection. Whereas, evil personalities are more likely to have their chin down with a sister and more bloated jaw to give an impression of anxiety over their victims. Additionally, heroes tend to have a straight face with seriousness and not often smile in a pose. This is because they want to put across they are in control with the situation and also calm down the victims, whilst showing their mindset is strong.

However, a villainous character is more varied as often they can show sinister snares like the criminal and lizard man, whilst putting their chins down to put this across more effectively. On the other hand, villains like the 'Joker' are confident, grinning and laughing all the time; this makes the character look insane and mentally deranged. This shows villains have a more wide variety of emotions; however heroes have a more specific mindset. Finally, I believe collecting reference images is useful to a certain extent, this is because you can apply facial feature ideas towards your own sculpts and even emotions.  But, there are limitations as character ideas could become outdated and unoriginal. Thus, you need to develop your character in a unique and fresh manner to make sure it stands out.

Figure 1: Strong focused eyes (Straight at you), chin up and solid body posture to emphasis heroic traits. (Ewan McGregor – Obi-Wan Kenobi, Star Wars

Example of Triple- A Games:

Figure 3: Chin down to reflect mischief, evil and corruption. Snaring eyes to highlight villainous traits. (Serial Killer Criminal)

Figure 2: Straight face to put across the feeling of control in the situation, broad shoulders to convey muscular strength and heroic traits. (Tom Cruise - Ethan Hunt, Mission Impossible)

Figure 4: Uncharted 3, Triple A game...

I believe it will be useful to research industry standard game characters, so I have an influence on what level of realism and technicality to achieve. This type of research will set me on the right path, as I study how they implement the skull structure effectively, such as Zygomatic Arch, Process, and Temple. Also, many other features like sinking in skin, lips and how facial features and poses tell me if she's a villain or a hero.

Dishonored -

• Proportional Face – Eyes dead centred on the face, eye spacing between eyes equal one. Nose slightly under eye spacing. Ear height is equal from the eye brows to the bottom of the nose. Mouth correctly positioned under the nose, not tooclose, not too far.

Three equal spaces across the face allowing a proportional facial features to be set effectively. No symbolic features like nose being proportionally correctly sized to other facial features.

• Temple, Process and Zygomatic Arch – Scrawny jaw allows the Zygomatic Arch to be more presentable and see-able like seen in real life figures and matching her physical attributes like her petite size. Also, the process being visible due to her skinnier features, meaning tighter skin and bones. This gives the ability for the character to be relate to a more human figure, as features like eyes and lips sink in tightly.

• Hero or Villain? - Glaring eyes showing innocence and corruption at the same time. Unsymmetrical features like scars and bruises could relate to a villainous character. However, realistic human figures even the heroes have unsymmetrical features like said before scars, bruises or even birth marks. Additionally, the head is centred meaning it could be either one. Therefore, I believe she doesn't fit in either category and rather fits in a more civilian region.

Methods of Texturing:

Illustration 4: Prostitute 2 Character, from Arkane Studios Game, Dishonored.

I researched various games to find how skin textures would look like, such as Uncharted 3, Grand Theft Auto and Dishonored. I find out two methods in which would allow this to be implemented, for example:

1. Exporting to Maya – Maya contains many shaders that can offer realistic skin textures through the Hypershade. The one I utilised was the MISSS Fast Skin shader (Subsurface Scattering). This allows the creation of a skin texture upon my imported model, whilst allowing specularity to be shown. Then, it is rendered through the Mental Ray settings inside Maya. Additionally, you are able to UV mapping textures, so scars, bruises are placed more effectively through photo shop.

2. Sculptris Paint Tool – Sculptris allows the use of painting upon the modelled mesh. This can be effective as you can get textures easily to paint it on the model. However, many colours and textures are unrealistic and pix-elated. Whereas, exporting it into maya will achieve a more realistic skin tone through MISSS Shader in Maya.

Illustration 5: The use of Subsurface Scattering...

Figure 5: The use of the Sculptris Paint tool.