Harrison Ford 3D sculpt - Deckard (Blade Runner) - v2.0

[Bloop]

Yes, difficult since it's "tufty" at best (on the sides)...but still more hair than your sculpt

Yeah, I keep adjusting the hair/head shape, but I don't work on it as much as the face. The camera perspective in the photos fools me sometimes. Plus, I almost made a huge mistake the other day when I accidentally had the display in orthographic view instead of perspective, which makes the whole head look bigger and distorted. Luckily, I figured out what was going on before I made any changes.

 

[Bloop]

UPDATE: New expression and hair

The hair still needs work, but I've "loosened it up," for lack of a better term. It's hard to get it looking "fluffier" when it's going to be 3D printed, since I have to watch out for undercuts and things that would make it harder to print correctly.

I liked how the previous expression turned out, but I wanted to try something different, a look with a little more intensity. I based it off of the pic below, which is a screenshot from the movie. Still needs more work, but I probably won't make any more major changes to the face.

 

[animator]

Impressive

 

[Bloop]

Update: I should probably call this project ""The Neverending Tweaking" because I can't seem to stop adjusting things. I went through several versions since my last post, where I kept tweaking the face, sometimes making it worse, but eventually getting to this point. Often, I'd think everything looked great until I change camera views and saw all new flaws. Even as I started making this post, I had to go back and tweak things.
In addition to the face, re-did the hair completely, reshaped the head and neck, and finally fixed (replaced) the lapels on his blazer. I did a lot of retopology via Blender's dyntopo, which I really should have done a long time ago so I could get finer details.

I did a lot of work trying to get his head reshaped - since I began this sculpt from scratch, I've always had some problems with the basic anatomy of the head. It would look right from certain angles, but way off from others. Hopefully I've got it sorted now.

I wasn't getting the results I wanted from the hair, so I smoothed it down and retopologized before reshaping and resculpting. I kept trying different things - custom brushes, different sculpting tools - but I can never get it exactly how I want. I'll probably try some other techniques, but I think this is as close as I'll get to what I want. I think it's an improvement over v1.0, at least. I re-did the eyebrows while I was at it.

After struggling with trying to fix them, I completely remade the lapels of the blazer. The originals had some errors - too thin in sports, non-manifolds, and lacked the detail I wanted for the texture. I got a nice, crisp herrringbone pattern now, so I'm happy. Hopefully it'll print up okay. I still have some more to do with the body, but hopefully not too much. I think I'm finally down to the final details. I might try to add some skin texture to the face too, but that could be a rabbit hole I don't need to go down.

 

[MAKE BELIEVE]

IMO it's looking great

 

[Bloop]

Update: I think I actually might be done...I'll have to see how I feel about it tomorrow, with fresh eyes, but I think it's as close as I'll get. Despite what I said in my last post, I actually made a lot of changes. I still had fundamental problems with the shape of the face and head. Most notably, the jaw has been reshaped. The expression ahs changed again - after looking at my last post, I didn't like that it had taken on a kind of "sad smiling" look. I'm a lot happier with it now.

I also redid the eyes- it's not easy to see with the brow hanging down, especially in 2D, but I didn't have the lids anatomically correct. I finished things off by adding more detail - it's hard to see in these renders, but I added some subtle creases to the face and neck, plus I added back the detail to the lips that I'd lost over my many iterations. I thought about adding a lot more texture - skin, fabric, hair - but at the scale I'll be printing this at, it likely won't be visible. I was also thinking of adding more textures to the shirt and tie, but since Deckard wears different shirts and ties throughout the film, I figured it'd be better to leave it plain for now. Depending on the shirt, there's different stitching and textures. Those things can also be added when painting it.
Next step - test prints. Oh, and I'm also going to modify the head for NECA figures, but that shouldn't be too hard. Hopefully I can just copy the socket from my Chief Brody head.

 

[joberg]

Just nit picking at this point: right eye's position should be more like the left one and, as you know, we have 2 different sides to our face.
The corner of his mouth, on the right, should be down. Here's a pic with the two left sides together (happy face since the "up" corner is mirrored) and the two right sides together (sad frowny face since the "down" corner is mirrored)

 

[Bloop]

Update:
Just saw your suggestion, joberg, as I was posting this. As I feared, seeing things today vs last night made me notice more issues to fix. I ended up redoing the eyes again - mostly the size and position, as I kept noticing something was always off, like he was slightly cross-eyed. I'm not sure if I did what you suggested exactly, but I'm hoping this is looking better. I also redid the nose, as I had wrongly adjusted it from the last update. Plus I did more adjustments all over (ears, mouth, jaw, etc).
I'm not sure if I'll ever get this quite right - I know it'll never be "perfect," but I want it to be as close as I can get.

 

[Bloop]

(Another) Update:
Still working on it. The few people that visit this thread are probably as tired of these iterative updates as I am, but it's all part of the process, I guess (at least for me, it is).
Changes made: I widened the eye on the left side, since I noticed it was narrower than the one on the right. I used a new reference photo of Ford to try to get the shape of the face better, including the nose. The chin has been reduced in length a bit. The mouth and brows have also been adjusted.

I made this animated gif to see the differences between these last 3 updates - I don't know what I why I thoght the one 2 posts ago was actually good, I can only assume I was just sleep deprived, or maybe I had a stroke or something. Yikes. Glad I kept working on it.

Still not sure if I'm done, needless to say, I don't trust my eye. I think it looks good today, but tomorrow, who knows.

 

[Bloop]

Just did this quick edit on my phone of one of the pics from my last update, to see how it might look with dark hair, threw on some film grain and contrast for fun:

 

[joberg]

You're very close; eyes are looking way better now. A minuscule adjustment with the corner slant of his mouth (right hand side): it should be down a little bit I've posted that funny pic to help you (with a piece of paper) to separate the faces in half and see the differences between eyes, eye- brows, lips and spacing between nose wings and end of his cheeks.

So, yes; it cannot be perfect on each side, as you know. If you look at the left hand pic, there's a difference from the wing of his nose to the end of his cheek. You notice also that his left ear is more "open"/detached from his cranium than the one from the right hand side.

My father always said that the left side is the "Heart side": more open, brow, ear and corner of mouth is up, as well as the eye.
The left side "the Devil's side" is closed, corner of mouth down, brow closer to the eye making it more slanty than open.

Sorry for the rant; it's just that I'm a super recognizer and my brain/eyes are automatically going to the obvious...not my fault; I was built that way

 

[animator]

I enjoy seeing the updates and changes! I appreciate you posting your process.

 

[Bloop]

Update:
I keep changing the scale and placement of the eyes, I think it's closer now. Did more changes to the mouth, inflated the top lip to match the reference pics. I know the lips look a bit exaggerated compared to previous versions, but Ford's lips do tend to be fleshier than I've made them. And now they also look better at all angles. I also reduced the size and reshaped the head/hair, as well as working of the shape of the face and the shape and placement of the ears. There's still room for improvement, but I at some point I need to move on from this project, so I don't know how much else I should do. There's also the risk of taken a step backwards whenever I re-work things.
I changed the lighting in Blender a little bit for this update. I also use the Eeevee render engine and I feel my renders tend to lose detail and crispness compared to the "soild" viewport shading, so hopefully I haven't overcompensated for that, since this will be 3d printed.

And here's another hair color edit:

 

[Bloop]

So, I'm not sure why, but when I work on this sculpt on my computer and upload to pics to this post, I'm convinced I've got things looking great. But then I look at the post on my phone, and I instantly see all the flaws. I don't know why that happens. Maybe my brain distorts things. I use a 55" 4k tv as my PC monitor, so maybe the large size is the issue? But I zoom out the Blender viewport frequently. And I also will literally step back from the display and look at it from several feet away. It's getting frustrating to spend hours working on this to get it to where I think it's good, then realizing the flaws after posting it.

 

[Bloop]

okay, I think I figured out part of the problem. My 4k tv is displaying things at lower contrast levels than my phone.
I took a picture of my TV compared to the the image I uploaded and there's a noticeable difference:

I know there's still flaws with the sculpt, but the higher contrast on my phone makes things look more severe. I'm not sure what these images will look like on whatever displays other people are looking at right now, so I don't know if you'll see the differences as much as I do.
I'm going to adjust my tv display to try to compensate. Maybe the fact that it's a qled display is also messing with things, idk.

 

[Bloop]

Update/test:
I tried adjusting my display, which helped a little, but I also adjusted Blender's render settings. I've also been adjusting the final renders in photoshop, adjusting levels and sharpness, to compensate for the lack of contrast I was getting in Blender. So my render settings are now higher contrast, though the blacks are still not as deep as my photoshop edits, but I wanted to see how it looks here.
I also edited the sculpt more - narrowed the head, adjusted eyes & mouth again:

EDIT: looks better I think - kind of dark, but better details than my old renders. I just edited the brightness levels of the image on my phone, let me know which one looks better:

 

[Bloop]

More "fun with filters on my phone":

I should note that with all my previous renders in Blender, I add some shine to the model to try to give it a little "pop," and more like a real skin than just the flat look Blender defaults to. I also wasn't aware that my original render settings were making things look low-contrast, so adding some reflection to the surface seemed to help. So it also may overemphasize some of the details. I also think the lighting can give false impressions, which is why I tried to adjust it recently. For example, I can't tell if it's just the lighting that's causing the eye on the right side to "pop" more than the eye on the left. I tried to make sure the eyes are relatively the same in terms of depth from the head and brow, so I don't think it's a flaw in my sculpt, but I'm not 100% sure.

I'm not finished working on this yet, still trying to get it as good as I can.

 

[joberg]

^^
The right eye is still off by a smidgen. Did you try to inverse his entire mouth? The right side is still too "smiley" compared to the left one.

 

[Bloop]

^^
The right eye is still off by a smidgen. Did you try to inverse his entire mouth? The right side is still too "smiley" compared to the left one.

Like I said, I think the lighting is causing the eye on the left to look like it's set further back in the head than the eye on the right. I haven't worked on it since posting, but I'll take a look at it again to see if I need to just adjust the lighting or tweak the actual model.
I plan on working on the mouth some more too, I noticed it's more pursed looking than I want. I think the left side needs to be pulled toward the left a bit, and possibly set back too. I think the area under the lower lip may be too concave too.
I may add a little more fullness to the jaw/cheek area. I realize expression factors into it - if his jaw is clenched and his mouth is smirking, his cheeks will be fuller than if his jaw is relaxed. A little more roundness may also help make this look a little more youthful too. The model needs detail, but too many lines and peaks and valleys on the face can make it look older than I want.

 

[Bloop]

Another update:

I lowered the shininess again, so things look better. But it wasn't the lighting that was causing the main issues, my sculpt still needed lots of work. I had to redo the eyes again. In addition to repositioning the eyeballs, I re-sculpted them. I realized I couldn't fix them just by pushing around what I had already done, so I smoothed things down and remade them. I also did a lot of work on the whole face and head.

I also realized that using reference pics overlayed on my sculpt still allowed for a lot of error on my part. Some of the reason is the blurriness of the pics - it's hard to find sharp, high-res reference images. And when I overlaid images with opacity lowered, it was still hard for me to get exact positions. So I also drew over the top of one of the images in phooshop to help me see the basic shape positions without the full image Note: there's a few errors I made on the drawing as well as some adjustments I made to the expression based on other reference pics (the ref pic shown also has Ford's mouth open which affects the jawline, and Ford in Temple of Doom has a bit thinner, more chisled face than in Blade Runner), so it still doesn't line up exactly, but it got me a lot closer than before. You can easily see all the things that needed to be fixed.

One big issue I kept having was eyeball size and placement. I think I figured out the problem. While I had been adjusting the rotation of the corneas from side to side depending on wher Ford was looking in the reference pics, I didn't adjust them up and down, and tried to line them up just by moving the whole eyeball down or up. By moving the eyeballs up toward the brow and rotating the "focus" of the corneas down, the curvature of the eyeball lined up better and I was able to get the eyelids in better positions. I also looked up tutorials on eye sculpting and realized I still wasn't gettting the anatomy correct. I'm better at 2D drawing, which means when I sculpt in 3D, I can get things looking good from one angle, but other angles may look wrong, especially if I screw up the basic anatomy (like the depth of objects like the eyelids). At least for me, I have some difficulties sculpting in "3D" on a 2D screen versus sculpting in the real world, since you don't ever really see the object stereoscopically unless you 3D print it.

I did a little work on the body as well, adusting the lapels and adding some wrinkles to the collar. I'm still working on making sure all the angles look good, so I may have to rework the back of the head or the profile to get everything right. I still am not sure about the eye placement - the depth may still be off. I'll have to take a break and check back on it later to get a better idea of things.