van Gogh 5

There's always something wrong. 

I don't like the mouth too much. The strokes of the eyebrow are too paralel. And the stretching in the tip of the nose is a serious problem. 

Apart from that, it's an improvement, I guess.

If I ever finish this one, it would be interesting to render a realistic face as well. I think combined, they could make a strong compositions.

van Gogh 4

Slowly getting there. 

The thing is, I don't want to use too much paint-strokes. So if there is a problem area, I can't just paint over it. I'll need to redo that area all over.

There is too much paint in the eyebrows. There is not enough variety in the forehead. Also, strokes might be wider there. (Because of stretching in the UV.) The tip of the nose is a problem area, since there is lots of stretching in the unwrap there. I'd like to distort the border between the beard and the skin more.

Basically, I need to start over again. But I'm optimistic. I'm getting closer to the picture in my head.

van Gogh 3

Phew... That diffuse map is very, very tough! But I've got a plan now. And this is not it, but close.

I did the canvas bump in Mudbox. I draw guide-lines on the face in Mudbox. All the rest is going to be Photoshop. I created a good enough brush. I did get some hi-res images of paintings, as reference images. And now I'm trying to copy the style. (Which of course is impossible for me.)

I use nDo for the bump from the paint. It's a Photoshop plugin.

The strokes in this test are too small. They need to be wider. Luckily, because that could save me some time. Also I need to fix the colors. I need more white.

Van Gogh 2

Dear Vincent is properly unwrapped. I choose to make the whole head one surface, so I can sculpt over the hair-borders. Now I'm testing which tools work best in Mudbox, to create the paint-look. (I only tried the area around the eyes for now.) I'm not there jet, but you can see what the idea is.

Coloring the diffuse map is going the be even tougher. I did a first test, but I'm not going to publish it here. (That bad.) Perhaps I should start with the diffuse and then do the sculpting? And perhaps I can use bits of the real paintings to create the diffuse? We'll see.

van Gogh

I know, yet another project, with so many unfinished ones. Still, I just had to create this.

Hopefully you can see it's Vincent van Gogh. The base-mesh is almost done. The idea is, that I'll sculpt all the paint on it, looking like the real paintings. So it was a real head turned flat by van Gogh with his special techniques. And I'll turn it 3D, with my techniques. Each step leaving behind it's characteristics.