OT -- Alien Grey

[Psion]

I've been playing with the sculpting tools in Blender. It's an interesting experience that reminds me of sculpting in clay for latex prosthetics. This render is of an untextured mesh with subsurface scattering and ambient occlusion activated. The model started life as the default Blender cube and although the eyes and mouth need more work, I'm going to consider this good enough for one night.



I plan to do series of these as I develop a new avatar for Second Life.

[spooky spice]

*screams*

[Klaus]

cool!

[Psion]

Thanks!

This is a quick update I made this morning to see how finely I could push sculpt mode before my CPU bogged down.



This weekend, I'll make a couple more from scratch to practice and refine my technique.

[Ziz]

He's pissed off about something.

[Psion]

Ziz wrote:

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He's pissed off about something.

Yeah ... I wonder what?!

Anyway, here's sculpture #2, and he looks a bit happier:

[Irishman]

Eyes are too small and the mouth and jaw too large.

Overall morphology is quite good.

[TheSeeker]

I don't get how you can say the eyes are too small and the jaw too large. How can you say that about a fictional being?

[RoJoHen]

Agreed. I think the proportions are just fine.

[Psion]

Thanks folks! But let's not be too quick to shoot down Irishman's suggestion ... fictional, mythical, or whatever, I'm searching for the implementation that resonates best with people. If I were doing a Vulcan or an Edoan (whistles innocently), I'm pretty sure a lot of people would be able to contribute useful criticism if I got something that felt wrong even though they're fictional, too.

Using Irishman's criticism as a starting point, I created ...



Mind you, I was a bit more rushed and sloppy with this than the previous two, but I'll be honest and put my failures up, too. Even so, there are things about him that I like. And I'm starting to play with "stippling" the skin ... pressing shapes into the skin to leave a texture behind. This is great fun.

[Venardhi]

Make some edge loops for the face to build up some functional structure and you'll see some big improvements overall I'd bet. The mouth area especially would benefit from it. You have some very human noses on both versions, and the nose is notable for being the part of the face that really brings it all together so to speak. I suspect you would achieve a much more alien and less "uncanny valley" look with a more alien nose to suit the rest of the face.

Overall mighty impressive for a first shot.

[Irishman]

TheSeeker wrote:

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I don't get how you can say the eyes are too small and the jaw too large. How can you say that about a fictional being?

Um, I can't tell you.

[TheSeeker]

Please don't tell me it involves probes!

[Redfern]

TheSeeker wrote:

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Please don't tell me it involves probes!

Well, not on the first date, and even afterwards, a dinner and a movie had better be purchased!

Sincerely,

Bill

[publiusr]

Irishman wrote:

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Um, I can't tell you.

Well, Stephen Jay Gould did have an interesting piece on that....
http://www.motherboard.tv/2010/9/8/h...-good-looks--2

Your later incarnation of the Alien looks friendlier due to neotony. The former alien has a larger jaw, like a 'hybrid' might be expected to. What Irishman has clued into is a subconscious understanding that a lantern jaw and intellect aren't expected to coexist well evolutionarily speaking--even though the eating of meat increased our brains. That having been said, it allowed the human animal to retain neotony, as adults jaws expand less with age than do most other beasts.