The Interdimensional Traveler: A Full Body Character Design - ZBrush Creature Design: Creating Dynamic Concept Imagery for Film and Games - page 127

Refining the Head and Face
At this point, we are ready to address the head in more detail. We will look for a sense of character in the
head through the way in which its shapes interlock and relate to the rest of the figure. We will also look at
ways to confound audience expectations and alter normal human features to create an inhuman and unset-
tling design.
Let's look at the head and face in more detail now.
Position and Placement
I want to bring the head forward so that it continues the S-curve created by the body. As it stands, it sits too
squarely over the shoulders. I want the stance to be more languid and long than that.
Use Transpose masking to mask the body from the head ( Figure 3-26 ) . Use a Transpose line to rotate the
head forward, as shown in Figure 3-27 . Note that I use the pit of the neck as my center of rotation. This is
because I want to lengthen the neck, and rotating from here causes the least distortion to the neck and creates
a more graceful length by extending the head out toward the front of the figure.
Remember, I want the proportions on this character to all be longer than normal. The distance from the
pit of the neck to the chin is typically one-third of a head, but I will make it much longer here. When moving
central parts such as the head, be sure to turn off X symmetry by pressing the X hot key. If you don't do
this, you run the risk of separating the two halves of the head or making them collapse into themselves. This
won't always be apparent when looking from the side view. When you have finished making the changes,
turn X symmetry back on.
Using the Move brush, elongate the chin and the top of the head. I also accentuate the cheekbones using
the Standard brush ( Figure 3-28 ) . The face will ultimately take on a cadaverous look, and the head will
be quite longer than a normal human's. This stage is about moving the forms away from human toward
something that borrows elements from the normal but carries them into strange combinations.
Step up a subdivision level and smooth out the eye details to create empty sockets. Using the Standard
brush, I sketch in the nasal cavity and pull shadow out beneath the cheekbones ( Figure 3-29 ) . This is to sug-
gest that the facial muscles extend from the cheekbones to the mouth ( Figure 3-30 ). Again, this is playing on
the human nature to recognize accurate anatomical structures on instinct. We have seen these shadows on hu-
man faces; seeing them here communicates that this is a thin, sickly body with a cadaverous face—unsettling
combinations!
Figure 3-26: Isolating the head with a mask