[FINAL, FINAL] CLASS ANNOUNCEMENT #7 (Apr 11, 2018): Thanks to those of you who have responded to the Questionnaire. The feedback is extremely helpful. If you haven't responded yet and you participated in the class - or even if you didn't participate - please fill that out and I will gift you 20 Breath of the Wild screenshots from my Switch.
[FINAL] CLASS ANNOUNCEMENT #6 (Apr 9, 2018): We've reached the end of the homework extension period and this class officially comes to end. What a month! It's been a thrill to see each of you forge your characters, learn new things, share tips with each other, and offer critiques along the way.
This thread will be open indefinitely but it's officially at the end of it's "class lifespan" meaning I won't be able to commit weekly time to it anymore and I will unpin it from the forum topics list. I'll pop in occasionally if I see activity but you all are more than welcome to keep working on their characters here if you wish!
UPDATE: Closing post on page 44 and XP has been added to each participating account.
CLASS ANNOUNCEMENT #5 (Mar 28, 2018): Week 4's stream is archived and available via the Past Events button on the Live Event page. Also a reminder that I'm extending the 'deadline' of this month and will be keeping this thread alive through the end of the first week in April. Hopefully that gives you all a bit more time to get your characters done!
CLASS ANNOUNCEMENT #4 (Mar 26, 2018): Week 3, done! Thanks to everyone who submitted by Sunday. I'm quite impressed by the neutralization and retoplogy work I've seen. It's a lot of work and I can see that effort in the WIPs and especially completed submissions.
Week 4 - the final week - dives into adding color to our model, primarily in the form of creating textures. Check out this week's breakdown a little further down in this description and see you tomorrow at the Live Event!
CLASS ANNOUNCEMENT #3 (Mar 19, 2018): Week 2 is accomplished and I'm finally caught up on submissions! Thanks to everyone who submitted by Sunday. We have some impressive character concept sculpts underway. In fact, I have yet to bestow a grade lower than an A this week.
Week 3 continues our 3-week character building production. Specifically we're going to look at pursuing an animation friendly version of our character - both how and why we would do this. See you tomorrow at the Live Event! Don't forget to RSVP.
CLASS ANNOUNCEMENT #2 (Mar 12, 2018): Week 1 is done! Thanks to everyone who submitted by Sunday. It's been a lot of fun seeing your caricature work and concept art choices.
Week 2 begins the 3-week process of building a character based on the concepts we choose. Don't forget to RSVP to the Live Event tomorrow - See you then!
CLASS ANNOUNCEMENT #1 (Mar 5, 2018): Class is in session! Today officially begins the BC2-1803 class. Please check the syllabus below for Week 1's focus and assignments. Begin watching the pre-recorded courses if you haven't already and begin looking for a cool, stylized character design for creating in 3D this month. The first Live Event is tomorrow at 2pm EST - SEE YOU THERE! 😎
Welcome to the CGCookie Class: Creating Stylized Characters with Blender! This class is designed to teach you everything you need to know about building stylized 3D characters. If you’re diligent in watching all content and hitting homework deadlines, by the end you will have a modeled and textured stylized character! It’s an intermediate-to-advanced class which means you’ll do best by having some experience with Blender and 3D modeling before committing to this class.
This is the second "Class" format where Citizen members are invited to focus together on a particular topic/skill for a month. Participation looks like this:
WHEN? The class will take place from March 5th through March 31st
Abstract: Stylization is any deviation from realism. Thus it’s a broad spectrum from slight liberty away from reality to extreme abstraction of reality. This week we're going to sift through various examples of stylized characters, noting their qualities, and categorizing a spectrum of stylization.
Goal of the Week: Train your eye and mind to stylize your perception. Practice simplifying and exaggerating reality. Loosen up your sculpting approach (gestural sculpting).
Pre-recorded course to watch: Art of Sculpting: Caricature Chapter
Week 1 Live Event (Already happened and archived!)
Homework:
Abstract: Story plays a big part in stylization. Not necessarily ‘narrative’ but background, personality, and purpose. The success of a character is strengthened by its developmental arc. The best artists create characters that are more than the sum of its pixels; more than the sum of its brush strokes and polygons; more than its final render.
Goal of the Week: Develop a story for your character; one that can fuel your creative workflow for the rest of the month. Then channel that story into the first stage of sculpting.
Pre-recorded courses to watch:
Week 2 Live Event (Don't forget to RSVP)
Homework:
Abstract: At this point a decision needs to be made about our character sculptures: A) Leave it as a sculpture or B) optimize it for ‘production’. Leaving it as a sculpture means it’s a static sculpture that can be painted, rendered, or 3D printed but not animated. Optimizing it for production means you turn your sculpture into a model that’s easiest to work with up to and including animation. If you opt for optimization, this week is mostly a technical and problem-solving task. We need to both retopologize our mesh and also neutralize it if the sculpt is posed.
Goal of the Week: Understand the concept of “production-friendly” and practice retopology.
Pre-recorded courses to watch:
Week 3 Live Event (Don't forget to RSVP)
Homework:
Abstract: Like Dorothy, our characters have so far lived in a black and white world. This week we’re leaving Kansas and adding color. There’s many methods for creating our character texture(s) including hand-painting, baking maps that accent the painting process (great for the less painterly character artists), as well as photo-sourcing. There's also a couple different formats: Vertex Colors and UV/Textures.
Goal of the Week: Get comfortable with painting textures.
Pre-recorded courses to watch:
Week 4 Live Event (Don't forget to RSVP)
Homework:
This thread is reserved for CG Cookie Citizens that are participating in the "Creating Stylized Characters with Blender" class. Its purpose is to serve as central communication for all participating Citizens (excluding Hobby plan Citizens) to ask me and each other questions and to post homework. As the instructor of the class, I will be monitoring this thread on a daily basis (especially Mon-Thurs) throughout the month of March to review homework and answer questions.
Free members are welcome to observe the thread but please respect that communication is reserved for Citizens.
FINISHED!!! Here is my homework assignment for part 1!! Thank you SO MUCH Kent, Jack, Mike, and everybody for all your help, the draw-overs, everything! Sadly the hair was a bit of a rush job, but it's now 3:00 AM and I have to be up at 6:30. Was it worth it? Well...yeah, actually. I learned a ton and I can actually be proud of this I feel, even if it's not perfect. :)
I'm just happy I could get it done by Sunday. Sorry the screenshot is all I have at the moment. I'll fiddle with cycles sometime to get it looking perfect eventually! (Or drop it by a mere 2MB so Sketchfab will take it. lol!)
I was fresh out of time for the cloak, but I threw in a stand-in to get the idea across. :)
Yesterday, I continued working on the character and gave him a bit of colour (first time using vertex colours). I found out it has its advantages, but also one major drawback. As I went back in today, I realized I couldn't change the sculpt without losing the colour information. And as temporary as it is I didn't want to redraw it at this stage. Luckily, I saw someone mention the lattice modifier, so I used that to slightly change the shape of his forehead and nose.
I also played a bit with his chin, but I didn't capture it in screenshots. And I've started working on his clothes, so the latest version sports a badly sculpted shirt (which will be mostly hidden, I think).
Homework Submission Week 1:
All right, I think this is about as good as I can get him by today. Ron Perlman:
Using the advice I was given here, I cranked up the exaggeration a ways. Perlman has a huge brow in profile, it makes his eyes look small and set back in any non-straight-on perspective, so I shrunk his eyes and deepened the sockets. The nose is a gimme really. And then he has the long chin, and that very interesting shape to his upper "muzzle" that I thought was unique until you guys mentioned Will Ferrell. Photos of Perlman have hair of many different lengths, so I went somewhat close-cropped to save myself a little work. No filed horns I'm afraid, but I compromised with a red matcap.
Did you know that there was a Big Trouble in Little China comic book? For real neither did I until like today - why am I never notified about these things? Well now that I know about it, I think my character is going to be the comic illustrator's rendition of Jack Burton:
Week 1 homework submission
So, to make it an official submission, here is my two tries on caricature bust.
First try - Jason Statham
I am not quite happy with how it turned out. I guess one of the key feature of Statham's appearance is his "haircut". I am not familiar with particle hair so tried my best with clay strips.
So, second try - Martin Lawrence
This one was actually much easier to work with since his facial features are much more apparent.
As for the concept art I'd also have two. Think I am gonna try doing both.
The first one is empowered with my 16-bit childhood nostalgia - Boogerman
*any similarities of Jason Statham and Boogerman are purely coincidental.
Now I'd check out the Boogerman movie starring Statham... Or I'd rather not...
As a backup plan I found a nice concept on artstation by Audrey Axt.
Great job with applying the feedback given Kyle. Your sculpt and the likeness really improved since the last post. It definitely feels like Benedict I think adding the hair/facial hair really helped the likeness.
Homework Submission Week 1:
Here is my attempt on Adrien Brody. I am ok with it - all looked so much easier watching Kent doing sculpting ;) I am still not very familiar with selecting the correct brushes in order to perform the scult I want. I learned a lot and know what I need to practice more.
I had no time to choose any character until now... :-( I urgently want to make the concept art myself also, I post a screenshot of it later. Is it ok for you, Kent? If not, I choose this one:
Homework Submission Week 1:
busy week, but luckily there is always sunday. definetly need more practice on basic sculpting characters.
Homework Submission Week 1
Basically it should be dropped to the Recycle bin but posting it as finally worked with it and learnt a lot. Finally it looks like a head, although has nothing common with Jackie Chan :D
If it should not been shown to anyone, inside would be proud to it as did mainly in the evening hours and last month the brilliant course of Jonathan Lampel - "Mesh Modeling Bootcamp" took me to the dark side from the scuplting, so being happy that at all remembered what practiced in January :-) This seems as a tricky balance, sculpting vs. mesh modeling, anyway for me the sculpting is more fun and so love :-)
Regarding the concept "art" this month, I would like to go with the toy of my one year old baby girl, in the given timeframe maybe could be able to sculpt and even re-topologize:
Reading from a lot of members that did the homeworks in the night hours or even had quarrels in the family :-), for them would like to send there was a song in Europe not long ago "Heroes" by Måns Zelmerlöw ( https://youtu.be/5sGOwFVUU0I ) and with a bit modified text:
We are the heroes of our times..
Dancing with the multitasking in our life.. :-)
Homework Submission Week 1 : Updated
I worked with a picture of myself for this one. Had to struggle a bit to push it away from my normal style habits and push things a bit further, but I think its coming along quiet nicely. 
Made with Zbrush. Took the chance to play with fibermesh a bit. It was my first time using it, and I think it came out decently.
Edit: selfie for comparisons(Sorry, just got home from work)
Also, here's the latest in the sketches of the character I've been working on while he strikes an unnatural pose.
I plan to clean him up digitally now that I've got a day off tomorrow and add some color, volume, and close up detail drawings(especially of the face, which is left rather bare due to the size of this sketch).
I feel kind of weird taking concepts off of the internet, so I tend to work off of what I can draw.
For a first caricature ever, this is pretty darn good! As long as you're learning it's absolutely a success. I won't critique it super hard since you are in the midst of learning a ton. The one thing I'll say is that I would have emphasized the slender nature of his face. It looks to me like you went more round which is the opposite of Turturro's face imo. But still the nose and teeth are pretty recognizable.
The move brush (grab brush in blender) is one of those obvious brushes but super powerful. One of my professors in college exercised his sculpting skills by using only the move/grab brush.
