Lighting and Posing tests.

After i had finished colouring and detailing the face in a neutral pose i created layers in zBrush and posed the face into 3 different facial positions. This was an effort to make my work seem more alive and give it a sense of meaning.

This is a HUGE dump of test images and experiments so i will be annotating the ones that i feel have particular value or demonstrate a certain technique.

This image is just a slight offset of the light with the neutral expression. 

The Angry expression is my favourite of the three i did, partially due to the limitations of not being able to open the mouth. 

The sad expression is more subtle, the slight downturn of the mouth and the raising of the inner eyebrows and upper eye lid. I also slightly lowered the ears.

This is one of the few images i have uploaded of the "Happy" expression. It ended up looking like a duck and whilst the eyes looked okay, the mouth looked bizarre. This could have been fixed by pushing back the corners of the mouth rather than simply dragging them up, but at the time i simply wanted to move on and focus on the lighting.

This is one of my favourite images. Using a technique from cinematography called a "Low Angle Shot" i aimed the eyes down towards the camera and tilted the head back giving the impression of looking up to the subject. This makes the head more intimidating and gives it a sense of power. Combined with the lighting from beneath the subject creating bold shadows across the face in places that are nearly never seen in day to day life, it creates an unnerving portrait. 

Although i didn't intend to look into composition and framing with this piece, this was a happy accident that occurred when the screen shot i took was mis shaped. it turned out to frame the head quite nicely, with a low angle shot.

This shot, combined with the head tilted slightly forward and the lighting being high intensity but from a  high angle, gives the head a sinister feel, hiding the eyes, and possibly the true intention of the head from the viewer.

At this point i went a bit abstract and started to add deep cracks to the skin with an alpha.

One of my favourite parts of this experiment was the way that bright and intense lights reflected off of the pore detail, so i decided to see how far i could push it. The cracks were a nice effect but the were perhaps too deep meaning they went pitch black across the front of the model and is definitely something i would like to explore more.