Sculptember is Sculpting whole September 30 days 30 sculpt. It is inspired from the famous Inktober by Jake Parker . The ideology is same here, to improve sculpting skills with consistency and practice and to also develop a positive sculpting habit. If you ever wanted to start sculpting or want to improve/push your sculpting skills then you should definitely do this.
RULES: 1. Sculpt 2. Render/Presentation 3. Upload with Hashtag #sculptember and #sculptember2017 (facebook/instagram) REPEAT Also join Ryan Kingslien facebook group www.facebook.com/groups/sculptember/ and share your daily sculpt. TOOLS Feel free to use anything you can sculpt from .Traditional clay,Zbrush,Mudbox,3Dcoat,sculptris,blender . |
Above are the only rules for Sculptember.
If you see the rules, I have included the presentation as a separate point as I feel its really important for an artist to develop a good presentation skill . A good presentation can push your artwork a level high and a bad presentation can overshadow it. So having a decent presentation is good. The whole point of doing something like this as a monthly challenge is to improve your skills and there is no better way to track it then to create an art page to record your progress .Just create a personal gallery of Hires images and you will definitely feel proud at the end of the month. Artstation and Behance are really good platform to do this. Share the link with your each upload so other can also see your album. Like I have created my album here ARTSTATION - BEHANCE and I update it once in few days. Below are the few things which kept on running in my mind while planning for my sculptember, these things are not the part of rules, just few things from my perspective. Should I use VDM and alphas/stencils ? Use of VDM for creating facial features or any primary details will really defy the purpose of this whole exercise, of course, these are the advancement in technology made for artist but there will not be much of artist will remain or develop if you can't create those primary parts with your skill and knowledge, once you have developed those skills use these tools to reduce your turnaround time in production/projects and repetitive task, for now try to refrain from using it. Use of VDM which you have created and is not supplied sound fair for a repetitive task like dragon scales ;). Should I sculpt with symmetry , Do I have to start from sphere all the time ? I know its funny, LOL ;) . If you are going to do a head study to improve your facial anatomy skill then create a basic primitive shape which you can quickly modify and start your practice. Save this scene. Starting from sphere all the time is not bad/wrong but is not necessary if its not the part of your goal/study. Nothing wrong in sculpting with symmetry I suppose, but do break it once you are done with sculpting, as it give a natural touch to your sculpt. What should I sculpt ? It can become really tricky while selecting the topic for “what should I sculpt today”. Your selection of topic is quite important as it can make or break confidence. It is good to start off with something simple and achievable, a realistic topic/goal. If you plan to start with Game of Thrones dragon on your first day (for beginner) you may end up creating something which may not look satisfactory as its a huge character with tons of details and complexity and if you are not approaching it correctly it will eat up lot of your time. In such case, you should try to narrow down your topic,hold on bigger things for later as you progress, how about sculpting just a head of dragon ? or maybe just as a warmup day, sculpt some really good skin scales on a basic primitive. Keep it simple in the beginning and amp it up as you progress and gain the confidence in your tool and skill. Should I use someone else's concept art or do I have to sculpt my own concept ? This majorly depends on your target of what you want to achieve by the end of month and and partly can be related to your profession , if you are a concept artist then its good to develop your own concept , or if you want to improve your anatomy skill and knowledge then just select a study of hand or feet or head. If you are using someone else's concept art please do take their permission and give them credit. Whatever you end up selecting for the day sculpt just do a quick search and study about it and if possible create reference board as reference is a very key and important to develop knowledge and get good result. PureRef is a really good application for creating a reference board. Tip - plan your week/monthly September calendar in advance . This will help you to manage your progression from the dragon scale to head to full body . To plan your weekly/monthly calendar first think of the topic which you want to practice, for example I am a character/creature artist but my anatomy knowledge is weak so I would practice anatomy during week as it will be lite thing to do with my daily job and then sculpt big designs Character/Creature in weekends when I have more time. Similarly their are many things which you can point out once you brainstorm. Organic Human
Robots Prop (sword/sheild/guns/helmet) Environment - trees/ Rocks/Stone statues Tips:
- basic organic form (primary details ) - secondary details - tertiary details EXTRASSS: ( really not important for Sculptember but if you have time then why not ;) )
With all this don't forget to have fun and build up a good skill and knowledge. |