I found my very first ever sculpt I did on Blender, and it was in Blender 2.79 (eww yuk) and the second attempt at it.
I’m posting this as an inspiration for people. There’s an 8 month difference between the two attempts.
I am hard on myself, I think I have plateaued and progress is slow and even back then I couldn’t dedicate as much focused time on sculpting as I’d like, and I can dedicate even less now.
However, it is an inspiration to me and I’m hoping this will be an inspiration to others as well.
The difference between the two came naturally. I didn’t take any courses during that time, all I did was watching a few tutorials here and there seeing how other artists do it and I kept sculpting as much as I could.
The other thing I did was observe and study my subject as much as possible, looking at literally thousands of photos of elephants, videos, their skeletons, muscles, dissections, documentaries, human anatomy, anything and everything relating to the subject that would be of help and really trying to deconstruct it and pay attention to as many shapes as I could, understand the volumes, where there are hard surfaces of bone structure, where there’s soft skin, muscles etc.
In the first attempt there are all the classic rookie mistakes, not paying attention to proportions, volumes, anatomy, rushing into details when the base is completely wrong and incomplete, you name it. If there has ever been a noob mistake I’m sure I did it.
The last attempt isn’t perfect by any means (one of these days I WILL make THE perfect elephant) but it’s miles ahead of my first try. It looks more natural and that’s all down to two things
- Observation/studying the subject (the elephant in this case)
- Getting used to controlling the tools better to get the result I’m seeing.
If I got there so can you (and probably faster too)