So, you've disobeyed your Instructor on the first day and you're trying a likeness for your first go -- or it's not your first go. Welcome! I personally found doing a likeness ( On my first go 😮) to be extremely rewarding. I wasn't trying to follow along with a constantly changing model, from the start I was grounded with a single face (Though I suppose I could have used provided photos of the final asset and the reference collages as he does...). point is, I found it less frustrating compared to other sculpting courses where I strictly followed along "exactly". Plus, it kept my brain from shutting off and going into monkey-see-monkey-do mode without absorbing. BUT I DIGRESS. That's just me. Your mileage may vary. Kent is the professional, not me. He provides collages for a reason.
The Tip: Striking the Likeness takes the entire course. I MEAN THE ENTIRE COURSE. My model didn't even begin to resemble me (I did a self-portrait) until Chapter 2. A lot of what a face is is the spaces between major features. It didn't start looking like me until I was done with the first pass of all the skin shaders at the end of chapter 3. I didn't feel that satisfying primal recognition until all the hair was in place at the end of chapter 4. The cheek bones bothered me until I was doing the split lighting in the final chapter and it clicked what was wrong because of how the light highlighted the ridge! I often found myself bouncing back to adjust some previous thing as every new thing was added. The recognition of every part of a face is dependent on every other part of the face and head. It's all interwoven context. As you build up different parts those parts inform on other parts in obvious and subtle ways you start to pick up on and sometimes can foresee -- like knowing you need a beard to feel out fine tuning the nose/cheeks or need complete lips and nose to sculpt the space between just so. And those are obvious examples...
DON'T BE AFRAID OF MAKING ADJUSTMENTS LATER. I repeat, RELAX, YOU CAN MAKE CHANGES TO EVERYTHING FOR THE ENTIRE PROCESS. Really let that sink it. Utility maps can be rebaked. It's never too late. And fixing stuff up after editing a part was never terribly painful for me -- shockingly (particle systems play shockingly well with shrinkwrap modifiers). every time I braced myself for pain and every time cleanup was pretty darn smooth.
Also, watch all of the videos before starting... seriously. x1.75 speed is your friend. I can only imagine how it smoothed the process and improved my final result.
Good tips man. I like the last part, I tend to watch a tutorial a first time as I would watch any series on Netflix, chill and just watching it without opening Blender. When your done, your brain makes you think you retained it all, but then you want to jump into Blender and practice only to discover you're actually kinda confused and you want to just make a quick search to a part of the video for a refresher. So this is the part where I tend to re-watch it all again only this time I'm practicing along and this is where the solidification of the knowledge occurs in my head, at least for me though.
HUMAN is a truly an amazing course, and extremely rewarding.
Jumping straight in at the deep end, as a beginner, to produce a likeness sculpt is always going to be tough, and for most result in failure.
In this course Kent walks you through sculpting the basic shapes of the human head with exceptional teaching methods.
Then we learn to move toward likeness by taking the basic head and using different contexts, gender, age, weight, etc.
Moving into the details is where the likeness really comes alive.
A real master class in sculpting from start to finish.
I would suggest, once you have your base head from chapter 1, start with this for every likeness sculpt thereafter.
And always use as many reference images as you can.
Love this advice, ffearguyq! I'm glad you challenged yourself to go for likeness anyway. Honestly my recommendation to avoid likeness is aimed more at beginners or timid/fragile learners. The challenge of likeness is very commonly attempted despite its difficulty. It can be deflating when not achieved and can even threaten further attempts.
BUT I know that resilient learners will be able to look past my recommendation and push themselves further. Often they will push themselves to success regardless of the time it takes, as you have. If it's not achieved, often they can't help but keep trying till they succeed.
In my experience I don't have to focus my recommendations toward resilient learners because they're going to push themselves no matter what. It's the more fragile learners that need more "rules" to funnel them toward success safely. All that to say I completely affirm your "disobedience" and likeness achievement! 👏