Mystic Girl: Making of a 3D Bust

in my last post I mentioned, that I wanted to continue the work on my Maiko-Sculpt, but life is getting in the way - looking for apartments, getting rid of stuff I hoarded all these years (!) and to mix things up a short trip to New Orleans, but this means new content for my page, which I want to share soon:) I still have to learn how to balance my time better, but enough with the blabla!:) A loooooooong time ago I saw the style challenge by @w0olf, where you could choose inter alia Gustav Klimt. You can check out the winners and some of the other posts here. It‘s a few months ago and I actually had the sculpt of the model after a few hours, but I just wanted a finished model this time and then eeeverything was pushed far back behind. If you‘re interested in the making of, stay tuned. I used Blender, Photoshop, Poliigon for the texture of the jewelry and rendered some frames in SheepIt!

I love the Golden Phase by Gustav Klimt. The beautiful (abstract) patterns and the way he portrayed his paintings in total, creating a "total work of art" by also concentrating in the details.
I wanted to create a character leaned on the way he portrays women. So I came up with the idea of a nude bust, giving my character a very slender look and an unusual hairstyle, but also trying to keep her sensual and strong. I didn‘t focus on the background and decided to choose a bright flower backdrop, which was a postcard I found, while clearing up my stuff:)

I started with a cube and deformed it into a rough silhouette of my character. Here is where I sculpted the model bit by bit, until I was satisfied with the look and added a particle system for creating hair. I rather change things up while sculpting and modeling and usually don‘t finish a part and then create something new like jewelry or other details.
So I kind of constantly change the model a bit, which you can see in the gif.

In order to texture the model, I had to give the model a new topology (=retopologize it), otherwise Blender would have crashed instantly. This is my least favorite part, because it‘s time consuming & here is where I first stopped the project for a while. Sometimes I switch to Zbrush and use the ZRemesher if I am lazy, but I just wanted to do it right and create this model only using Blender. I used a modifier to create the wireframe to showcase the retopo.

As usual, deciding how to texture my models are always a bit difficult for me even with a colored concept. I exaggerated the look a bit more, while sculpting, so in the end I wanted to try out different looks. As you can see, the first texture is still very raw, then I started changing up the model a bit, which you can see with the eyes, because it always looks different in color. I added details like the texture of the jewelry and at the end just tried out looks. I like the grey pink hair/light green eyes version the most....maybe because I am thinking about coloring my hair rusty light pink :D In the end I decided to stick with the concept et voilà- the model is textured and the last step is setting up the final light for the title render.

Here you can see different settings in lighting the model and in the last two renders, I added an armature (= skeleton) just for the body and the neck, to change the pose.
It was quite a challenge for me to create the short hairstyle and stick to the concept. I hope you like the result and I will be participating in a few contests and then finally update the Maiko model. ;)