Buddy,
more than kind, my words were due. You made my vision come true, much sooner than I ever could and much better than I had imagined it should be done (pores with a needle? resculpted cheeks? no way!!).
The customs you guys pull here are jewels that deserve lots of cheering, especially if this kind of artistry you guys practice is not your main mean of income and you do this in the surely very little spare time work leaves you, and after (or instead of!!!) home/love/family/friends. And all out of sheer love to beauty and to Tolkien's work. Not bad!
And yeah: I know what you sent through. It is not lost. And I am keeping the pics and any comments you have made thus far on how you pulled it.
I had eyed the Commonwealth head loooong ago, along with that other McKellen head and the Elijah Wood head I'd like to do for Frodo. All of them are great renditions of the actors' faces, if not appropiate for the subject matter at hand, and hence need oceans of work to get them where I want them. But I had to grab them before they vanished, to give my future self a chance at them (I don't think Asmus is ever going to do their heads that well). I got Magneto and Elijah first because they began to be rare (first one was always rare), but took me ages to get to the point where I could buy Sean. Lots of other items were more important that a head I don't need and I know I'll never get to customize (because to do so I'll first have to go through a hell of a training phase and I don't see that happening anytime soon...).
And then... there was you man!
When I first saw your pics I was so glad I was not alone in this!
I have stored them, along with any of your technical comments thus far, and.... well.... let's see if next year.... but I don't know.... :-(
Who's Rob btw?
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OK, for the record (and as reference for my future customizing self), let me get this straight, because I have spent a big deal of time scheming this one out, even before buying the head. Were these the steps you took?:
0) You don't strip the paintjob until the end. Might be useful as a reference to perform the initial tasks.
1) You decide where you should start shaving around the goatee: carefully finding and marking (with, say, an exacto) the points where you will start scratching afterwards (also with the exacto) a sort of frontier between the goatee and the excess hair. Those points must form a line that should look natural, flowing along naturally with the sculpted strands or flocks of hair and not just cutting them harshly, so that scratching the frontier will leave a goatee with a slightly irregular, organic, natural looking outline. If some flock/strand couln't be kept from looking "cut", some refining with the exacto and sandpaper will be needed to terminate them in a natural-looking way (just like Sweeney Todd would do it).
2) Once a sort of natural looking frontier is clearly traced, and the goatee already has a life of its own, you carefully sand the areas of excess hair on mandible and neck, with special care put on the frontier not to hurt the goatee. The challenge here would be smoothing the whole thing off in a natural-looking way while keeping face morphology intact.
3) Replicate complex, Zbrush-generated detailing: replicate the pattern of pores. OMG............ You really have to practice with some dummy head made of the same plastic to really get the effect OK before attacking Boromir. What kind of needle did you use, man??
4) Removing hair: you have to leave a very smooth surface for the rooted hair to be applied on, while keeping the hairline and the head's own morphology (how difficult!!!!). Dremmel first, exacto second, sandpaper(s) third, right? Did you keep ALL THE HAIRLINE, even in unseen areas, if only for nonsensical perfection? ;-p
5) Ears: are those actually the original ears? Look bigger on your piece... Was it needed to make sure hair could be tucked behind them?
6) Cheek resculpting?? Why?? What was wrong with the original ones? What did you achive? How do you re-sculpt a head sculpt???
7) Paintjob removal (no paint on paint damn it!!!!) and paint applications with emphasis being put in covering hard transitions/screwups while keeping the small details (pores).---> I am clueless here. How do you do non-crossed, vibrant eyes with realistically vascularized white areas? And eyebrows/eyelashes? How many washes, of what colours, on the beard and hairline? How do you do that realistic skin texture? I mean, you choose a base skin colour that sets how dark the guy will be (how do you determine that?) then maybe some whases, and then some flecking/speckling? Then how do you pull the latter? And then you also have to decide on hair color for the goatee/eyebrows, which then you'll have to match with that of the rooted hair, as you did so perfectly...!
8) Hair rooting.--->Even more clueless. You get that Tibetan Yak hair that is white(?) in the beginning and then you dye it "the right color" (oh man, that must involve so many tries... how do you decide on colour?). And well... then you do whatever it is that you do!! (I know nothing about rooting hair).
9) Styling: noted! Thanks for the tips!
All this correct? Am I forgetting any step? Any tips on replicating the pores?
I can easily imagine this whole process being not only difficult, but also stressing: you screw ANYTHING, you just ruined a $30 headsculpt and got nothing.
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Now, and even if it is already too late, some suggestions concerning your rooted hair:
1) What color have you painted the area behing the hairline? Shouldn't it be the same color as the rest of the skin, so that some natural whitening will be seen at the middle line? (the line where each half of the hair "helmet" begins)
Is this base scalp colour affected by the rooting process? How?
2) Shouldn't you have shaved the widow's peek and made the hairline flat at that point? Believe it or not: the original has no widow's peek, and if done properly, the ensuing slightly enlarged front would be even accurate! Check it out yourself!
3) In the skin area VERY near to the sculpted hairline, would it be better to slightly darken the skin? I think I have seen it done on some rooted figs... can't remember which ones right now though...
4) Rooted hair should totally cover the area behind the sculpted hairline, especially at the widow's peak. It is not like that right now.
5) The sculpted hairline itself should be barely visible, highly integrated with the densely rooted hair (at least in that crucial area).
What do you think of these points Raymond?
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Finally, and since you seamlessly resculpted the cheeks and seem to know a lot about resculpting, I'd like to ask you whether you think that some more resculpting could get this head to look more stern, or improve its accuracy. I do think that there are some clear accuracy problems left. I am comparing with these pics:
https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net...boromir.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20110327195115
https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net...sion/latest?cb=20121023114949&format=original
Problems would be as follows:
- The lower lip is not the way it should (too thick at the center, too thin at the edges). Would it be very difficult to fix?
- Ears are way too big (looks like an elf), even if it might be needed for being able to tuck the hair behind them. Maybe transplanting them from some other headsculpt might help, but that would definitely be a hard one to pull right?
- Moustache and eyebrows to thick / dense. More shaving needed there.
- Chin has too much volume to it. Very hard to fix: redoing the hair texture... OMGs...
- Nose too thick. Very difficult to fix too?
- Are Bean's eyes actually blue...?
As to how make the guy more stern...... no friggin' idea..............
LMK!!!
Thanks,
m.
Asguardianboy, first off...
Thank you for the kind words but more than that Thank you for the amazing questions it really touches me because I can see you’ve thought about this head before and therefore cult undseratand the complexity that goes along with what I fandangled here is not lost on you and for that I appreciate it greatly.
Once again it was Rob who turned me into this and spotted the diamond in the rough. He deserves a lot of credit.
You’re correct the full head and the eyes were totally stripped and repainted and I did concentrate on the vibrancy of the blue and position of the puples.
The beard was so so hard. I sanded the sides of his cheeks down by hand and the I retextured it wirh a needle. It took hours and hours.
Repainting it blended it all in.
You’re also correct in that I left just a slight slight bit of the hairline enough so that it blended in with the sight slight hairline i always paint in otherwise usually using a mm or less of a very thin brush.
The product is a mix of revlon hair gel and future floor polish heavily watered down and hours of selecting the right parts with the right wave and consistency from a giant piece of yak hair Hyde dyed three times over to get that correct shade of his hair.
I have to say this is not even the most radical way I transformed this sculpt. I changed it to another Sean bean character from much later in his life over the last weekend and took even more drastic measures to transform it ! I’ll share that soon.