If you desire many things, many things will seem few.
-Benjamin Franklin
In the run of my current project I have the opportunity to create a bust of America's first great lothario-philosopher-enterpreneur, Ben Franklin.
I started out by researching statues and busts of Franklin (in-between bouts of Youtube clips of Tom Wilkinson's amazing Franklin from John Adams) and quickly realized I actually have quite a bit of artistic freedom, since even the great statues and paintings don't necessarily see eye to eye, regarding what Franklin looked like. Nevertheless, I started by researching...
My favorite is the second, from Lundeen. I like the witty facial expression. I can't afford a bust that probably costs several grand, but that's one I would totally buy.
The next images outline steps in the process. First, a very rough shape of the bust is created. And I do mean ROUGH. You just need to have a very basic starting mesh to begin your sculpt.
Afterward, the head was brought into Mudbox and the fun begins. Thanks to a pressure-sensitive Wacom tablet, slowly but surely, Franklin's face begins to peak out of the polygonal mess. I begin by adjusting the biggest features and work down to smaller and smaller details, increasing the polygonal resolution of the head as I go to accommodate the smaller and smaller details. By the time I reach the final images, the model weighs in at about 4.5 million polygons.
A little bit too "evil emperor Franklin"...
...much better.
The final render was straight from Mudbox, which actually outputs some very pretty imagery thanks to the Ambient Occlusion and Depth of Field and Lighting and Tone control, all in real time. The next step will be to export a reasonably dense mesh to 3ds max, export the finer details as a displacement map, and export the very tiniest bits, like eyebrows, as a bump map. That's a project for another day!
-R
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