Hi everyone! I posted this on the WAYWO thread but no replies so I figured I would post it here as well and see if anyone got any tips/crits and suggestions. I hope this is allowed!

I was thinking about doing one of the 4 horsemen of the apocalypse so in order to get some inspiration I read the book of revelations. While reading I ended up thinking the Lamb of god was an even more interesting character. Here´s the passage that made me change direction:



7 Horns and eyes? Challenge accepted! So I went and did a sketch before bed:



I wasn't very happy with any of those designs. I looked and searched for inspirational images, references and mood-board of what the character should look like but unfortunately nothing struck me so I went to bed feeling defeated.

This morning, I looked at my previous day work and the thought of starting over felt really un-inspiring so I fired up Zbrush and started sculpting away:



After a while longer, I defined a bit more the face, eyes and mouth. So heres a little update:



So my question(s) is(are): How common and how bad is it to go O´Reilly and "Do it live!" when it comes to sculpting or sketching characters? As you can see, the sculpt doesnt really look like any of the sketches although it has the main ideas in place over there.

Also, any crits, ideas and suggestions? Would like to do a nice piece so any advice is more than helpful.

F&@# it DO IT LIVE! But really though whatever works- I've been known to go- PS- ZB- render-export doc to PS- Paintover etc etc.
as far as the design- I think you have a jumping off point but could push it harder- inject some Wayne Barlowe in there. good luck

I'm liking where you're going with your design, but its not immediately striking me as being a sheep. Certainly the ears and muzzle are suitably sheep like, but I think it might be worth trying to push a bit closer

I think it'd help the overall sheepy-ness if you added the ribbing to the horns as you've got in your concept along with a bit of a curve to each I think it'd help significantly. Giving him some wool, at least to the "hair" area behind the horns could also work pretty well I think.

Keep at it. I'm looking forward to seeing where you take this.

Thanks Dan!, that actually helps out a lot. I might actually do some paintovers to see where I can bring this little guy further. Thanks for the Wayne Barlowe tip. Its amazing how much one can know and love someones work without even knowing who did it!

Thanks for the feedback Jackablade, I think you are right, I will do some adjustments to this piece, add the ribbing to the horns, some curve to it. The wool might be a bit difficult as I am still a sculpting n00b and dont have much clue as to how I would render hair (or wool, for that matter) but as anything CG related challenge accepted!

I think both of you are right. This piece is worth pushing it forward. I had an initial idea of doing a quick weekend project but I will push it for a fully finished piece with all the Polycount help I can get! :3

Ill post updates as soon as I got something new to show. Thanks a lot guys for the help!

Unfortunately I dont have much time today to work on this guy so all I could do was to squeeze some little paintover during my last minutes of my lunch break. I hate having these days where all I want is to work on a piece. But I guess thats work for ya! :P

Anyway, I took the feedback given by both Dan! and Jackablade and went to google some more. I found a four horned sheep and they look pretty bad ass so I thought I might take advantage of their look into my piece:




Pretty bad ass isnt it? So here is my paintover which I will hopefully soon enough add to my character. So here it is:



So what do you guys think? Better with these horns? I am still taking a look at some Wayne Barlowe, as suggested by Dan! (his Hell series is AMAZING) and I will probably incorporate more into this piece. Lets see how it goes.

As always, any crits is more than welcome! Come tear me a new one as this is the only way I learn!

Ooompa-Loompa-Bumpady-bump!

The horns are definitely helping the silhouette! Looks much better now. May I suggest giving him a goat beard at some point? I know its this guy is a lamb but the two are related

Looks really good, but makes me think of the creature in Pan's Labyrinth. The horns will definitely help with the silhouette. Keep up the good work though.



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Yea the new horns are way better IMO. I think the lowest one should curl slightly and be smaller/shorter to make a nice tapered "V" type shape inline with his ears.

What nyx said, with your sketch right now there's a tangent right where the bottom two horns touch so making the bottom horn shorter will help fix that

Id give it a softer face. Looks like an old grump right now.

Love the new horns, I think you could go further with the curling set (second from bottom) though. So they're not as wide as the ones above and below, but stick out farther back and the bottoms of the curl actually come down to the ears. At the very least, breaking up how wide the bottom 3 sets are will help make the silhouette more distinctive too

def go with the new horns they look heaps good.
his posture is a little stiff. maybe you could move his head/neck forward a little so he's not so straight

Sukotto: I guess a little beard could be cool! Might have to add it next time!

Permafrost: You're right, it is a bit reminiscent of Faun from Pan´s. It was one of the reasons I looked for Robert De Niro frown pics so he wouldn't look so young and joyful like Faun does.

nyx702: Could you explain more on the "V" shape? I don't think I quite got it correctly.

whats_true: One of my fears was that he would end up looking too much like Faun if he looked younger. Like I mentioned to Perma, I used De Niro as my reference but I might have to try with a cleaner face.

Tigerfeet: Thanks. I will have to play with the horns a bit more.

Illusive: Thanks! I agree that it looks a tad stiff ATM. I will later on change his posture too. My plan is to sculpt, retopo, texture and pose this fella. But Im not in a hurry, I want to take it nice and slow and make this as good as I can!

Thanks everyone for the nice words and critique! I have to agree with everyone here that the horns do indeed add so thanks to you guys for the tips. Also thanks to nyx, Sukotto and Tigerfeet. You guys were right about the horn curl and touching problem. Today I had a couple of hours free so I fired up Zbrush and continued on our lamb guy and I encountered the problem you guys already mentioned. I should always come here first before continuing with my projects. Would have saved some frustration, that's for sure!

So here is what I made today. Unfortunately I am not pleased at all with it. What I did was the following. I masked the areas of the horns and extracted the mesh. Once each set turned into a subtool, I clicked Dynamesh and moved them around a bit. I dont like how "lumpy" and bad it looks. I think it might be better to do a base mesh in Maya, extruding some faces along a curve so I have more control of the curvature of the horns.

Secondly I added the cloth. I did the same as with the horns. I just masked the area and extracted. I went a bit overboard with the wrinkles to the point that this isn't recognizable. A real shame but I guess this is how I learn, by fucking up and doing it again.

So here is today´s "progress"!



I thought it might be good to post here, even though it doesn't look good and I will probably redo it later on. I always wonder if people do have these kind of days but they never post them? Because most of the time people have amazing progress!

Anyway. As always, feel free to tear me a new one! Point out every wrong or anything that I can do better with this piece as I want to make this perfect. This isnt a work or school piece, this is for me to learn and get better. Have a great rest of Sunday guys!