Continued to work on male body template:

Here I am currently with both templates:

really good starts Pokrad. My templates don't even look this good.

Satisfied with the heads, will continue to refine further:



Both sculpted from the ball, no scaning involved

M1 Helmet modelled in Blender using image references and measurements, done for practice, and imported to Sculptris:



Looks silly from the front as inside of the helmet is not sculpted yet...

Helmets are the hardest and hats are the hardest to for me. I choke because I know they are made in factories and have precise molds and here I am trying to do it by hand. Same goes for shoes and clothing I'm okay with furniture and machines as long as I have plans or have actually made the furniture piece by hand before.

Finished with sculpting templates. Now I'm doing retopo in Bleder to make mesh more suitable for posing (animation).
Anyone knows some public resource about animation topology theory ???

Something like this:
http://www.phungdinhdung.com/Studies_paper/Realistic_face_modeling.shtm

unfortunatelly, only face is explained...

Pokrad,
That is a very good example. If you breakdown the face into its superficial muscles. That is exactly what you will need to do for the rest of the body, break them down into their superficial muscle groups.

Here is what I use as a guide. I have a back and side view if it helps.

I think this is it, if You don't mind please post other views

Here you go Pokrad. Enjoy.

Thank You !

Started retopo using grease pencil and BSurfaces. Process goes really fast, but it requires cleanup. But I'm rather pushing vertices around than manually creating the edges. For example stomach is not cleaned, but topology is there, I just need to fix it:

Wow,,,looks great. I normally just define the groups using the smooth function in Meshmixer and don't really focus on the topo because I'm actually just using the animations to bend my armature into a pose and wrap its clothing around it. However, seeing what an excellent job you are doing in blender makes me want to give it a try just to get the hang of it. If you get really good at that you can get a job for a 3d gaming company

This time I wanted to follow workflow that many 3D guys are sugesting: first sculpt the character (in Sculptris - but it can be sculpted in blender too) not care about topology, but focusing on volumes and shapes.
Next retopo that sculpt so it could be riged and animated without problems. Good topo is essential for good animation - at least gurus say that.
You can see from the picture that I have almost the identical result as original Sculptris template and with almost 100 times less vertex.
We will see soon when I put my topo to test when posing using rigging

Here is the link to tutorial on Bsurfaces:

http://www.blendtuts.com/bsurfaces_review

Bsurfaces are now part of the Blender - do not need to download it as video suggests.
The retopo is explained at the end of the video.

Thanks for the links Pokrad. This step is very essential to good animation. I skip it though becaue I am primarly interested in using the default figure as an armature to sculpt on. The only thing I concentrate time on is the head. Unless it's a nude the rest gets disgarded as I add clothing. That being said, I do like animating from time to time and I really should focus some time on topology so this info is really great,,, keep it coming.

The thing is, posing high-res mesh is a pain - and making armature for every single sculpt - also pain
That is why i decided to make my two "puppets", retopo them, make armature and save for later use. Next step is posing - with good topology and prepared armature it should be much faster - not more than few minutes.
After posing I'll get back to sculpting and detailing face, adding or removing muscle mass, adding clothing etc...that is the plan of the workflow.
I do not have real animation in mind at all

Good idea. I hadn't considered it from that perspective. I have one mesh that is nueter and have been using it as a bases to make several armatures. What you're saying makes me think along the lines that I should be creating several different body types, fat, muscular, skinny, old and young and then use them as needed. Good idea,,, good work flow.

30 min sketch, from ball:

Bruce Willys - one hour sketch (from the ball):