The Bird Boss - Resculpting

When it came to re sculpting the bird, I wanted to use the new zBrush techniques I learnt to add more detail to the model, and to produce a better result.

I began by sending my bird's model over to zBrush without the feathers.

For the bird's beak I was looking at a few references, but I settled on mainly trying to follow the form of a prehistoric bird:

Although I wasn't following it exactly I tried to make sure to have the high nostril and hard edged beak.

I experimented with the polish brushes a bit more on this, trying to keep the beak hard edged and sharp.

I then moved onto fleshing out the muscle around the eye using the claybuild up brush. I was focusing on bringing  out the volume of the eye-lid.

For the jaw and mouth I wanted to continue building the muscle around it.

I also started focusing on adding a sort of fleshy border between the beak and head, using the buildup and dam standard brush.

For the finer detail I used a hair alpha brush:

I found that using a feather alpha in the previous attempt to sculpt the model did not go very well. I found a hair brush useful just for adding some texture to the body and stopping it from looking completely bald.

When it came to the legs, I stuck with the reference of ostrich legs that I used before:

I started with building up more muscle volume on his legs:

I wanted to make sure that they looked sinewy.

For the details of wrinkled skin, I used the dam brush again:

This brush was very useful when it came to creating the scaly texture on his shins.

I puffed out his chest a bit more, as I found that bird's actually had quite strong chests as indicated by this anatomy image:

I then added some detail to his spine, mainly using the surface noise to erode and adding some surface scrapes to the model.

Finally I finished up with some extra details, such as a revisiting the flesh on his beak, and making his tongue more spiky and monster-like,

Revisiting the bird's sculpt was definitely worthwhile. He already looks a great deal better, and I'm eager to see how the sculpt when add to the textures of the model.