Adventures in Sculpting, Part 2

Okay! Things are coming along now... Its kind of like baking a cake or sewing a dress. There are certain things that really need to be established BEFORE you start cooking or piecing together... or building armatures.

So, first things first. What are you making?

I'm gonna start very simply and do just a simple female nude. Women are just more fun to sculpt. Men are all bulges and hard lines while women are curves and softness. Plus, with less extreme angles, I think it will be easier to mold down the road. Or, at least, thats kind of what I hope. :D Once you figured out what, you need to sketch out what it will look like. This is more of a stylized character picture. Since I'm doing just a nude, I skipped this step.

Next is the plan.

For constructing a figure, you need an armature that will support what you're trying to build. To make the armature, you need whats called an armature map. This is sort of a sketched out character that fits into the scale of what you're making. Humans are classically 7.5-8 heads tall. If you're doing a 10 inch figure at 8 heads, there are 8 lengths dividing the character/armature map.

From the top line down: Head/crown, chin, nipples(or just below if male), navel, crotch, just above the knee, mid-calf, ankle and bottom of foot.