Duncan, A Gross New Friend

 I wanted to go down my initial route that I took with some of my models in semester 1 for this next character with stylised realism. To begin, I thought of two simple words I could use to describe a character, on Duncan's case I chose 'fat' and 'ugly' and went from there. As with all of my sculpted characters, I began with a simple size 64 sphere, and used to move tool to position some ears, a large nose, and a wide chin.

Once I had gotten a rough shape sorted out, I went on to give a higher amount of detail to the facial features that would really sell the initial words I used to create him. Each feature is clearly highly exaggerated in order to make this character a truly disgusting looking person. To get the realism portion of the character right, I had to look into how fat usually deposits itself on the face, and where it builds up the most, which gave me the large cheeks and the secondary chin.

After this, I coloured the eyes to give myself an idea of just how gross looking I wanted Duncan to be, and added the smaller and finer details to the face such as the pores, wrinkles, dimples and scars. I also added a touch of asymmetry to his face to bring him more to life, and to add to the uglier parts of his face such as the droopy eyes and mouth.

In my initial texturing test, I had Duncan with a dark 5 O'clock shadow, and clean white eyes, it was suggested however to remove the stubble and replace it later down the line with some thinning stubble using the fibremesh tool, which really brought him to life later down the line. I chose to add a harsh looking purple hue to his under eyes to make him appear sleepless, and give the illusion that Duncan doesn't really take proper care of himself as he should.

I then started to work on a sweat dripping look using a brush to paint a blinn material over the basic material I was using for his skin originally. I also added veins to the sides of the head, and burst blood vessels on the nose and cheeks to indicate age and perhaps some sort of alcoholism.

After finishing the sweat, I added a few more colour details around his head and finished off by added some fibremesh components to him for an added grossness effect. The hair on the top of his head was combed over from the middle on both sides, while the nose and ear hairs were simply lengthened out from their origin spots.

While so far it is incomplete, I have also started working on a lovely fitting body for Duncan, starting with the torso, I created a bean shaped sphere and added further details from there, the legs came second with the thighs being a combination of the move tool and clay buildup to add fatty areas and creases in the sweatpants. The bottom half of the legs stemmed from a single sphere, shaped like a cone using the move and pinch tools, then sculpting the feet onto the bottoms of it. Next step will be the arms which I have not yet begun, as I have become distracted and started several new sculpts at the same time.

Weekend Sculpting

 Sunday morning I woke up in the mood to try and sculpt something I haven't tried yet, so I decided to make a clicker from Naughty Dog's The Last Of Us, as it doesn't have a proper face, it instead has a large covering of fungal plates. I thought this would be a fun experiment to see how well I could make something new to me and how fast. Overall the sculpt took me 4 hours from starting sculpting from a sphere to finishing painting in Zbrush.

It was especially fun to put all the gross details into the sculpt like the mottled rotten skin with the wounds, and the veins coming out of the plates. If I continue to work on this sculpt, I will be adding a neck and additional fungus dotted around, I will also have separate individual plates of fungus on the head rather than just one that I've duplicated. This was a fun experiment to do as I've found I can produce some interesting looking sculpts in only a short amount of time, with a higher amount of detail than I usually add for my stylistic approaches.

One thing I want to change is the origin of the fungal plates from the face, as on the concept art for the clickers, it sprouts directly from the chasm in the centre of the head. With this in mind I want to recreate the plates on the head entirely and get them more accurate to the original concepts of the clicker.

A Splash Of Colour Part 2

 I have been painting the second character sculpt lately and am very happy with the outcome. So far I'm liking this one a lot more than the first sculpt, as the colouring has really given the character personality. Combine that with the variations of hair styles and this character can go from good to evil looking with a single change. 

As with the first sculpt, I have added some skin mottling to bring along some semi stylised realism into the material, and also to give the character a slightly more aged look. 

This time I decided to put less detail into the irises of the character which I think has produced a more aesthetically pleasing and simple look.

I have also chosen to add moles on the face (and back of the head) to give the character more personality overall.

I have also opted to give this character actual eyebrows this time as I felt it brought a more friendly atmosphere to the character which is what I wanted to test with the different styles.

When designing the hair for this character, I wanted to give off the impression of a somewhat heroic looking character with some styles, that could be flipped to some kind of maniac looking bad guy with others. For this I gave the heroic side a nice right parted comb over and a thick moustache. I chose the hair colour ginger as it seems warm and friendly and fits the character's green eyes well. 

In contrast to the friendlier dad like hairstyle, I have chosen to also give the character a large mohawk to try and give the impression of some sort of crazy villain or minion. Once again the ginger hair helps portray this side of it as it has allowed me to give the mohawk and mutton chops a sort of burnt appearance.

I have also made a neutral sort of side character type look with an afro and soul patch. This variation gives off the impression of a shop owner or companion rather than an enemy or main character.

Finally I have done a Dr. Eggman inspired villain that gives off the impression of some sort of mad scientist, or perhaps a distinguished gentleman.

I have also been playing around with facial scarring to give more history behind character's appearance. With the Zadd button selected when painting, I can add colour while sculpting to give this unique look. I have also set alternate colours on so that if I hold the alt key while painting, the wounds go inwards and are bright red to give them a fresh appearance, while the former gives an older, healed look.

As tested on my other character, this technique can deliver some quite gruesome looking results. 

A Splash Of Colour

 During the last week I have been continuing the second character sculpt, and also adding colour using the painting tools inside of Zbrush itself. I have really enjoyed this as I've never tried painting directly onto a model before. I has allowed me to achieve the look that I wanted without constantly having to import the textures from Photoshop over to Maya to see simple changes.

Due to the way the painting in Zbrush works, I've had to bring the tris up to accommodate the detail in the painting, and allow it to be exported after I'm finished without any compression or loss of detail.

Here I have tried to make the texture for the character look semi gross and old to give the character that sort of thin, evil look I had originally intended when sculpting him.

I also added a bit of sun damage around his forehead, nose and cheek area to give the impression of carelessness when the character is in pursuit of evil deeds.

I chose to avoid giving the character eyebrow hair as I wanted to give a sort of deranged kind of appearance where he doesn't mind too much how he looks, so would not care.

I decided on a rough looking dirty blond for the hair as I felt that darker hair would make the evil look much too obvious as stereotypical villainous characters have darker hair / clothing. 

I am very happy with the outcome of this character as I feel like I have represented a clearly obviously evil looking character simply with the sculpt and colouring.

Accessories and a second sculpt

 After finishing the first sculpt of a stylised character, I have begun to create accessories for him to give him a few new looks. These along with the hair styles have given me a wide amount of potential characters or traits from this single sculpt, giving looks that could fit with a host of genres.

I have also begun work on a second sculpt with a more heroic look to the facial features rather than this thin villainous look to see if the same sort of looks can be achieved. During the sculpting of this I used references from main characters in games such as Arthur Morgan from RDR2, Nathan Drake from Uncharted, and Booker Dewitt from Bioshock Infinite. These characters have heroic like facial features that make them appear friendly yet also hold a leader like look.

Here I have added some block colour phong materials to give of the stylised plastic look I was aiming for, I have also attempted to go for some less conventional hair styles this time with the mohawk in order to give the character more personality. This combo has become my favourite as it gives him a sort of ragged apocalyptic survivor sort of look. When I create the accessories to go along with the character I will be adding some welding goggles and cyber pieces to help aid this look.