I bet you can’t lick your elbow!?!?

*I do not own or take credit for this image.*

I thought maybe things would get better once my hand healed up, but boy did that all change. I came home at the beginning of the week to find out the water heater decided to take a mind of its own and well flood my basement, and destroy my money pit, a.k.a., my collection of wood that I have stockpiled for a rainy day of woodworking. Luckily the savings account in this current state of the price of wood, did not take severe damage (oh, btw if you need wood let me know lol).

So, onward did I ever face the one a challenge of replacing the water heater while my wife watched me like a hawk so I didn’t mark up the walls with dirty hands or carry the old and new up and down the steps. Little did I know that I was going to bang my elbow on the wall as I was approaching my final steps of finishing up, I felt like Peter Griffin holding my arm and crying in pain and laughter for about 20 mins. The good ol’ funny bone, well that led me to believe that the next step in my anatomy studies for sculpting should be the arm, right? I was not able to explore more of the tutorial due to time constraints of replacing the water heater, but I was able to explore the construction of the UI for Zbrush and develop my own intuitive interface, along with customizing the overall program for my liking. Thanks to Derrick Davila for the Flipped Normals UI link, and watching the tutorials further in development of understanding the program before diving into more.

This was by far a different approach and more refreshing way to go about my studies, before I spent so much time researching many different websites and resources in order to come up with what I thought may be a good place to start and approach the hand, well this time I stuck true to the books and references I used before. This gave me more time to focus on my sketching, which was by far rusty to say the least. I approached by studying the arm from Anatomy for 3D Artists, and Anatomy for Artists. The in depth approach to understand the bone structure and muscle movement are outstanding in order to achieve the correct structure of the arm, it also offers in depth proportional reference as well.

The arm is a very complex structure although in structuring it for blocking out of a drawing and for the overall structure in sculpting it can be depicted by two gesture lines of the flow in which the arm is being displayed. After those two lines are given, you can then block in or what I found easy as how I used to sketch instead of blocking out using cubes, etc. I sketch flow and structure where those lines may meet and then pursue a better blocking of what I am sketching. As you can see in the being stages of following along with one of my favorite drawing/sketching books by Jeff Mellem. The simple shapes can be brought forth by cylinders and then explored in a structure of the bones. The bones in the arm have a form of showing depending on the build and have a unique way of pushing the muscles out for display. The Forearm consisting of the Radius and Ulna twist around in ways to give the Forearm movement. I honestly did not know that we were constricted to only a few ways of motion until I dove into constructing the narrow placements of the wrist and elbow for the blocking of the simple shapes.

Elbows like many other joints in the body can be structured as a tongue and groove joint when sketching and blocking out. Although this is of importance when sketching in order to get the point to the tip of the elbow and place the forearm, I found that in the sculpting forms of the arm, the elbow seems to hide itself in the skin and muscle surrounding the area. The difference in sketching and sculpting is that the light falls on the structure of the elbow in sketching. It is a very unique point to have detailed in the sketch, but in the sculpt can be slightly buried in the outer details of the arm and overlooked. The Pectoralis muscles of the chest connect to the Humerus and are important to display because when we twist the arm, the Ulna and Radius are displayed in difference presence and proportions as the Delts of the shoulders are. The Three major important muscles to remember for the shoulder are the Serratus, Rhomboid and Scapular region and are attached to the torso, so remembering them when sculpting only the arm is that they hold a presence in the form of the Delts and Scapula of the arm. The joints as many others in the body are only of importance when the arms are extended or twisted, so in the form of animation having the weight painted in a specific area for the Ball and Socket joint of the shoulder, and the Pivot joint of the elbow are important, but in a pose of T-pose of a sculpt, using reference of the given sculpt is by far enough to get the indents and placement right of the joints twisting to the skin stretching. If in the future I am going to want to do a more organic or stylized character, I will have to take into consideration the way their joints will move those specific muscles if they are exposed from clothing etc.

The Deltoids are three a three headed muscles and can become one of the most complex areas of the arm, which is why it is a good idea to start within this area which I did. I structured my block out around the fact that the Medial Head and Acromion Process Depression of the muscles give the proportional length and structure of your reference arm to elbow length. By then the Long head of the Bicep and the Brachialis will be able to be formed quite easily around the structure of the short head of the Bicep. Medial Triceps and then easily filled into the remaining open area of the upper structure of the arm, which then gives you placement to construct the elbow. The Brachioradialis, the Pronator Teres, and the Anconeus are able to be placed, leaving a gap for the Longus and Brevis to be started, wrap around the forearm, and given structure developed by the Extensors Digitorum and Minimi. All of this then extends into the hand development, but it is a good ending point to structure the blocking or sculpting around a band that is an Annular Ligament within the body, this specific one is the Retinaculum at the wrist.

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I began my sculpt with a using a bit of the techniques and tips I picked up from the Beginners Guide to Zbrush, I find it easier to read examples and work through them rather than bending my ears to understand a time-lapse tutorial or watching a time lapse and confusing myself even more. I blocked out the overall structure in different polygroups using the IMM Primitives brush and manipulating the spheres inserted with the move tool. I did not do dynamesh until the end because I wanted to work with a lower res to get the structure formed first. I used different polygroups to consist of the overall major shapes of muscles and structure, rather than trying to bend each to the exact muscle without a skeleton to work from. I think dynameshed and used the reference I took from the Anatomy for Artists (I do not take credit for the images), I manipulated the images to remove the nudity from some of the images.

I pursued sculpting and refining the structure with the use of the clay strips brush, dam standard brush, and the move brush. I only added slight detail to indents and imperfections of the sculpt to reference by using the standard brush in both adding and removing clay. Here is the result: