So I'm working hard on my portfolio now. Going to start updating a thread to try and maintain a high level of motivation.
I'm going to start with my most recent D&D character. He's a beefy alchemist juicer type guy and an animal-person race based on water buffalo. I can't find the specific species/pictures that I originally based him off of, but the part I was most interested in were the horns. Something like this (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fd/Bubalus_arnee_schaedel.JPG), except straight and angled back a bit more. So big, thick skull and a badass set of v-shaped horns shooting back off his forehead.
I started today by making his tower shield. It has lots of pouches and a fold-out shelf on the back, so all he has to do is jam that spike into the ground and he can do his alchemy stuff wherever (and sell drugs). It's about 550 vertices with 1024x1024 diffuse, normal, and specularity maps. So this would be perfectly suitable for importing into a modern game like Skyrim or something. The character is supposed to have a sort of shamanistic background, so I wanted to make it rough-looking. Like it was made with heavy, unrefined materials and primitive tools. Not sure how I like it, though. Will probably try to refine it tomorrow, as well as get started on modeling the character himself.
I really should post videos. Screenshots just don't do this stuff justice. You can't see how the normal maps make for depth in the wood grain and stuff.
(http://i.imgur.com/2hkZy3g.jpg)
(http://i.imgur.com/8BprgbC.jpg)
Nah, just kidding, nice shield. I always liked complex weapons like that, even if they are in all likelihood less practical, never let your GM argue that! My favourite was the lantern shield. And yes, I dual-wielded those.
(http://www.myarmoury.com/images/features/pic_spot_combo62.jpg)
It's slow, but it's progress.
(http://i.imgur.com/00y8i6e.png)
I sometimes sculpt in clay, and muscles are additive over the skeleton. Zbrush is a LOT like sculpting clay. That's its strong point.
Here's a female nude I did a LOOOOONG time ago. (photobucket didnt like the front pic! Deleted it from my library! Might have been the boobies. Seriously. Crap like that would delete images of Michelangelo's David. Art isnt porn, and they shouldn't censor it.)
(http://i186.photobucket.com/albums/x248/wierdw/back-1.jpg)
Note the bone and tendon structure in the hand.
I cheated somewhat when I made this. I created a generalized mirror symmetric humanoid body in another program, then brought it into zbrush with the OBJ import for detail work. The standard "sphere" starting material has a pernicious pair of verticies at the top and bottom that I hate with passion.
While it may draw unwanted attention, the internet is FULL of pictures of naked people of both genders. Dont be afraid of pulling some good samples from this resource for use as artistic models.
hehehehehehh...
You could always do it the way I often am forced to, given the tools I have access to. (rather, the lack thereof...)
Take for instance, building a humanoid head using hand drawn splinar sections, like this...
(http://i186.photobucket.com/albums/x248/wierdw/headsections.jpg)
Literally, purely eyeballed/imagined curves drawn freeform, at radial intersections, for the purposes of controlling the creation of NURBS surface features.
It's how I made this ugly guy.
(http://i186.photobucket.com/albums/x248/wierdw/mannequin_zps0a74f8aa.png)
To model in that program (Dassault Systemes CATIA-- its high end industrial CAD.) I have to build generalized sectional contours, and then drive surfaces through those. Think, building a body from CAT scan slices type approach, with some interpolation between slices. Building in Zbrush is FAR more intuitive/easier! LOL!
What I did for the naked lady was build a generalized head, minus detailed figures, with a head, torso, arms, legs, hands (with fingers) and feet (with toes). It was only a rough approximation, given the limitations of the software. I exported that as an STL, opened that with blender, saved a wavefront OBJ, and pulled that into Zbrush. Naked woman there is 100% my work. :D
Zbrush sucks hard at creation of the initial humanoid form, as you have no doubt experienced. Turning up the texel level high enough to bud out individual fingers and toes, and still have enough detail level left over to put actual lifelike features on them results in billions of polygons in places they arent needed, and pernicious verticies can ruin your day. That's why I elected to build the general humanoid body outside of Zbrush, and use Zbrush just for fine detail and tweaking.
This was the very ugly generalized humanoid trunk + arms + primitive head I used, in it's NURBS form:
(http://i186.photobucket.com/albums/x248/wierdw/nekkid.jpg)
and this was the primitive hand with individual digits in nurbs form:
(http://i186.photobucket.com/albums/x248/wierdw/hand.jpg)
(shiny plasticy texture is default color for nurbs data in catia.)
You can do it however you like, just dont be afraid to do certain things outside of zbrush.
If you practice enough you will get good, regardless. Just keep at it. I note that I am getting better at the splinar intersection build method I often have to resort to myself! I can do some pretty wild stuff now.