Review of a sculpting DVD

Here is my review of 'Mark Alfrey's Sculpting the human head'

I purchased this from Adelaide Moulding & Casting Supplies (link here) and seeing as the human head (and a likeness) is one of the harder challenges to master, I'd thought I'd add this to my library.

It has two main sections. The first part is sculpting a head of a very old man (as shown on the DVD cover) working up from the crumpled alfoil base, all the through to adding skin textures, wrinkles, pores and making all part of the sculpt so it has an organic feel to the whole.

Mark uses the observational style of sculpting (that is, see how this lines up, notice how the ears don't protrude past here, note the angle of the skull) rather than the formulaic approach ( centre of the eyes line up with the corners of the mouth, the face can be divided into thirds, etc)

Shown is in progress work as video, always good, as we get to see how a sculptor works. He works with a relaxed style, discussing what he's doing, how's he's interpreting what he sees, how he checks things as he goes.

There are plenty of little things to pic up on, such as how he places the ears lower limits with toothpicks, and checks symmetry of the ears by measuring from the nose back, and then adjusting as needed (proof that even the experts need to adjust their work)

Personally, I would have been more comfortable if Mark had mentioned key points in the placement of the face (the formulaic method), that is a rather minor gripe.

The really great part is the skin texture - how he adds this in, smooths it back subtly to integrate it with the whole, and some of the tools he made to get the results he needed. For those of us who need to add skin texture, either to larger scale human sculpts, or animals, this is really great part of the DVD.

The second part is how to sculpt caricatures, bit of light hearted fun, and challenging all at the same time.

Mark talks about collecting your reference photos, working out the key features of the face in question, distinctive nose, chin or jawline, and then exaggerating those features.

The end section is photographing your finished work; this section is a bit dated, as he talks about a polaroid versus a 35mm SLR.

The concepts of lighting, tripod mounting your camera, rather then taking a snap with your mobile phone camera with flash, still holds. So worth studying if you want to post better pictures of your work to the web.

For those of us who want to sculpt in larger scales, this is a very good DVD, however, if you sculpt in the smaller scales (say, 1/4 or smaller) then those kinds of skin textures start to disappear at these kind of scales

(and truthfully, I cant remember the last time I saw a wrinkly 1/72 scale face....)

recommended, with conditions.

Available in NTSC/ PAL same disc.