Magnifique! what a beautiful sculpt, what a sensational render!, almost you can touch it!, the Ryan’s awesome render mix is powerful,(and very secret! damn,)! fantastic job Ryan!
Thanks guys. A brief overview of the process is below. I wanted to test the value of digital sculpting.
What I have found over the years is that digital sculpting is faster in the beginning stages and much easier to build up form and iterate on poses. However, as you get more detailed you need more polygons and more control and it becomes harder.
Clay sculpting is slower in the build up stages but once have clay on the armature it is much faster and it is much easier to get fine, nuanced control. Clay is also easier to work with when you have a model in the studio as you can use sight-size methods as well as direct measurements from the model.
So, the first part of this starts with a series of zsphere poses, the first maquette phase. My goal is to just watch the model and try to capture his energy. I should note, I had the poi artist Alien Jon in the studio for this. Fantastic guy
Then I choose a few of those poses to rework and adjust.
Then I choose just 4 of those to add volume to and refine.
Add rings to one of them to start to test the feel out.
Refine the pose and keep working every part. Again, this is just the maquette phase. Total time invested at this point is about 5 hours.
Then throw this in the uber-secret Ryan’s Awesome Render Mixer and see what it looks like as a bronze sculpt. You’ll find that you pick up things you didn’t notice in ZBrush just because it is now “bronze”.
Once you’ve thrown this into Ryan’s Awesome Render Mixer its time to send it to galleries and see if they bite. If they do, well, it takes 4 weeks to deliver during which time you madly race about getting it ready for the foundry! 
Hope you found this useful.
Ryan
Attachments
Really like that. has a very classic feel and quite a few cultural references in there.
So cool as usual !!! Ryan’s Awesome Render Mix… hm!!! sounds like a nice new ZBrush Workshop topic 
Great sculpt, very artistic! 
Greetings,
Dominiek.
Excellent sculpt as usual Ryan, so natural shape and so good in anatomy.
Thanks for explain us “circle of life”. I totally agree with you when you said :
“Digital sculpting is faster in the beginning stages and much easier to build up form and iterate on poses.” Keep a good work man ! 
Emmanuel.
Thank you for inspiring stuff, your book is amazing, i’ve bought your book a week ago and hellps me alot
You Rock Ryan!
I know you wrote this post years ago - but I just saw it.
Fine sculpting as well. Her pose is not only very appealing, but that standup collar with the cutout is very cool. I haven’t seen that done before - extremely creative, and it compliments the whole sculpt very well. Being technically good, and being an artist who can “see” is one thing - but originality brings your work up another level.
best,
Trent
Cool stuff Ryan. Can’t wait to play around myself.
Ryan, always ahead!
Love these experimental pieces Ryan.
You’ve detonated anatomy.
ye! great work on these last “abstract” pieces ryan. looks great.
-ps. great to see you got time to do a bit of art yourself. now that you are busy teaching others to do art. hehe…
-r
OMG Ryan is here,Awesome Guy
Please, does anyone have a link to Ryan’s seam stitch brush set? I just saw someone using them and I really want them but the links are all dead.
Wonderful pieces, love all of them. Just so much inspiration to be creative !
@All Meshed Up The seam brushes on the first page? You can get 'em here via the archive.org website http://web.archive.org/web/20120531160110/http://www.thegnomonworkshop.com/store/freebies/downloads/GnomonWorkshopClothingSeams.zip
Hey Ryan
Amazing work man. And thanks for sharing these very handy looking brushes. Unfortunately, the link doesn’t work. Can you pls fix it or post elsewhere pls? Many thanks!