ERIK SAN JUAN'S BLOG-FOLIO

Nature of Water Process

This is one of my earliest sketches trying to define the poses of Bruce Lee that are most memorable to me. Much of the gesture in these images should be pushed to show the dynamic pose.

At first I try to attain correct values and lighting before I convolute my image with color, since color can complicate things. This method also works well if your colors and tone in the image could change from a warm to a cool scene. With this method you can experiment with different color schemes without committing to just one. Here Bruce's hair is not right, and I am not happy with his face. But with good reference you can visually see those characteristics that are the essence of your subject matter.

In this image, I concentrate on the face more because it will be the focal point of my piece. If I get this wrong then I am screwed. Here I try to make his hair less "bowl-cut-like" than the image above, and more dynamic. Reference is key when trying to nail a likeness, so gather tons of images to help you capture those subtleties, not only in faces but in everything you see.

Modeling Female Bum

I can definitely say that modeling a creature with tons of wrinkles, folds and texture is much easier than something that is as smooth as a woman's rear-end. There are landmarks of anatomy to follow when modeling a pelvis, but with a young woman there are certain subtleties that need to be indicated, as well as the correct falloff for muscles and definition, without making it too muscular and keeping it very "feminine." This is a portion of a personal model I am working on in Zbrush3. In our media driven culture and within the artistic world, the female figure is one of the most fascinating beautiful things to render in 2D and 3D. More on this in future posts to come.