Beginning a brand new character from scratch sounds extremely daunting at first, and it can take a few tries to get something that you're happy to continue working on. In this blog I'll be going through each and every step I take from beginning to end of my second character in the Outlaws And Lawmen set, Explosive Eddie. This set of characters are stylised, with hand painted textures inspired by the game Sea Of Thieves. To begin creating a character, you need to have a basic idea in mind of what this character will be, create a small description of the character to aid you along the creative process, or even simply pick yourself a few descriptive words that you can use to mentally visualize who or what you wish to create.
For Explosive Eddie, I chose 'short, fat, grubby and tattooed'. This gives me a rough idea of how this particular outlaw lives his life, and therefore how he should come across when designing him. Additional details to think about include what sort of accessories the character might include in his appearance, what sort of hair or facial hair the character has, do they have any tattoos and if so where? These ideas all help to manifest an image of what sort of character you want in your head, which could also be helped to visualize with a few concept ideas, or a browse through similar characters on Art Station or Sketchfab.
To begin the character, I select the bottom DynaMesh sphere from the lightbox, as the polys aren't drastically high so that detail comes in too quickly, and aren't too low so that early blocking out is difficult. Starting a character with a low tri count is important, as it helps you build up the character's forms and features without being obscured quickly by the addition of detail. Starting rough and building up is the best way to form a character, making sure that details such as wrinkles and scars come in the very late to last stages of the character's design, ensuring that said details like this actually fit the character, and don't look obscurely placed. Each time the next level of detail is added, you subdivide the subtool you are working on, for example, you have reached the maximum amount of detail you are able to include on the head without the polys of the mesh looking stretched or distorted, this is when you hit CTRL + D to divide the subtool into more polys for higher detail. Often, I find it useful to see what the next subdivison level looks like before moving on, meaning that if I add some detail in some parts, I check that it works going forward before I can fully progress. Remember; subdivisions can be reverted to the previous level if the character starts to look muddy, going back a level to add stronger forms is always a good way to make sure the forms of the character flow naturally and work well.
The best way to sculpt a character is to imagine you're looking at it through a camera that slowly enters more levels of focus for each subdivision, so the lower levels should only hold the basic forms of the character, like the bone structure being visible, and the body shape being prominent in a way that can be clearly identified and built upon.
The next step is to take that sphere and mold it to a form that you can work with, for this blog I'm starting with Eddie's body as the main large sphere. This will be the character's stomach, which is arguably the main focal point of this character.
At this stage, I find it easiest to use the transform tools to get a rough starting off point for the form, then switch to the move tool with mirror mode on, and refine the shape I'm going for. Building upon these shapes with brushes at this point before you've got your main idea solidified will make your sculpt misshapen, so it's a good idea to get yourself a solid structure to work from before you head straight into sculpting.
It is important at this stage to check the shape from every angle, to make sure nothing is lopsided or out of place. Even though currently it is a simple sphere, it is also the basis of a character, so needs to be as good as it can get.
The next step is to add some more spheres to build up the upper torso and head, again pushing and pulling the form with the move tool after gaining a rough size and shape with the transpose tool.
As this is just the blockout stage, simplistic forms are the best to visualize the proportions of your character, and gain an idea of the sort of style you're going to achieve. Due to stylisation, you have a lot of freedom on proportions when designing a character, however you must always have reasoning for the proportions you use so that they feel like the character could actually exist within the universe you're creating. For example, if in my next few steps of this character I chose to give him a smaller, chiseled head and extremely muscle bound arms and legs, the whole thing would look very out of place. A basic knowledge of anatomy is key for making sure you can achieve an accurate and appealing character no matter what style you choose to work with. The best way to go about this is to study the book Anatomy For Sculptors, and try a few anatomy studies to find your stance with how human forms work in what conditions so that you can exaggerate the right features without it looking off.
Next, the arms need to be blocked out. For rigging purposes later (and an easier way to visualize the full character), posing the arms stretch outwards is the best way to go. I find it easiest to split the arms (and legs) up in three sections, the upper, lower and hand. This gives you three separate sections that are easier to visualize as it's where the joints of the arm lie.
When blocking out, making only one arm and leg is the best way to go, as you can work on one and then mirror it over and break the symmetry later.
Adding the arms also helps to guide how tall you want the character to be, as proportionately you wouldn't want the character to have tiny arms with long legs. Reversed however often gives the impression that the character is very strong. Somewhere in-between is where we want to aim for Eddie, as he's short and fat.
The legs also help to show how the character is going to feel after they are finished, as they can display their posture and height, determining how they might act. For Eddie, the forms are larger and shorter than they would be for say a tall thin man to help push the idea of his body type.
More often than not at this stage, these forms will change and adapt to the details you choose to add to you character, sections will be made bigger or smaller, or even chiseled out or rounded. Blocking in allows you to take your idea and visualize it before having to make any drastic changes later on down the line, so changes to the form at this stage are welcome and exciting.
At this stage it is also important to make sure that you're checking how the character looks from every angle, and making sure nothing is looking out of place or deformed. Once you've got this blockout stage ready, it can help to screenshot and take into another piece of software like PhotoShop to draw a rough plan over to help develop your idea of how you want the character to look.
Begin the head by adding the main eye catching features, I often find it easiest to start with the nose as a base then follow that with the eye sockets. Adding the bone structure around these features helps with proportions and placement of the other features of the face.
Even if the character is on the larger side like Eddie, I find that the bone structure being visible in this early stage is useful to help visualize the shape of the character's skull, and helps with making sure everything works. Once everything is in place structurally, I will add more volumes to these areas to make the bone structure less prominent and gaunt to aide with the appearance of his larger frame.
When sculpting the eye sockets, I find it useful to have one physical eye in place to build around, while keeping the other socket empty for a while to ensure that the shaping of the eye looks natural and works to hold the eye in place.
A physical eye is also useful to gauge where other features should sit, with the top of the ears being roughly where the pupil of the eye would be looking forward, and the bottom of the ear in line with the tip of the nose. The eyes should also be roughly in the middle of the head (from top to bottom), giving a more accurate placement for the nose and mouth after the eyes are properly where they should be.
The next step is to subdivide the head (only once you can't get any further detail in with the amount of polys available). This next level allows the sculptor to add more volumes to the larger areas of focus. This level is still not high enough for finer details, and is still best to focus on the more prominent features such as the cheeks, nose, eyes and ears. The mouth here is a little too low poly to be able to do much with, but the lips can be blocked in at least to give you something to work with later on.This subdivison level is a good place to add the second eye, as by this point the socket should look like it can hold an eye successfully.
In the same subdivison level, you can start to form the features that represent who the character is, for example I've made Eddie's mouth a permanent frown with angry eyes to enthusiastically portray the type of character he is.
I have also inserted the detail of the iris and pupils, as you are able to visualize the character in a more lifelike view. This enables you to build upon features that you can see fitting the character stronger and more reliably.
Now you are beginning to progress in detail, I find it important to switch to the body's subtools and make sure they fall into the same style set as the face, to ensure the character matches the body you are creating for them.
At this stage, blocking in features is the best way to go forward s you don't want the head or body to be more detailed than the other at various stages. Keeping a set style allows for the character to feel more consistent and lifelike.
When you are relatively happy with the structure of the facial features, I find it useful to add any facial hair at this stage, even if it is just blocking in. Doing this makes it easier to picture the lifestyle of the character which in turn aides in the development of your character's appearance.
I chose this style of facial hair for Eddie as it fits his bulldog-like features well, bringing attention to his rough looking demeanor, thus giving a finer impression of what the character is like simply from how he appears.
As with the torso, adding detail to the arms is the next step in order to make sure the character's style flows throughout his entire body. For this I have chosen to make Eddie particularly strong in the arms even though the character is vastly overweight, giving him a sort of 'tank' character trait.
Ensuring the pieces of your character match in style and form are vastly important when creating a stylised character, as having a large body like this with small bony arms would give the character an unbelievable appearance and would cause the finished look to be visually incorrect.
To maintain a consistent appearance in form, I often switch between the bicep and forearm subtools as often as I can to try and keep them lined up in details. This is important so that when you merge the two forms into one, it is easier to follow the flow of the muscles you have presented in the sections, allowing for a clean and consistent look in the arm.
Merging the two forms with dynamesh enabled allows you to stitch the two subtools together as one, and allows for the form to become one solid object.
This arm is still very much in the block in stage, and so just like the face, only the features that could be presented in silhouette form should be present thus far. For example, veins and elbow creases should not be added yet, as the detail surrounding those features still needs to be carefully carved out.
Once again it is vital to check the section from every angle to ensure that the forms fit correctly, and the arm doesn't look misshapen or deformed in any way before moving forward on the character's appearance.
Next, doing this same method with the legs allows you to have a near full bodied character quickly, as both the arms and legs can be duplicated and flipped in order to give the character the right amount of limbs. With the legs being thicker on a body type such as Eddie, the shape is larger than it would be on a skinnier character, meaning that you must take into account the body type you are aiming for, just like with the arms.
Having two parts for the limbs allows you to visualize the joints before you have sculpted them in, making it easier to know where the right pieces of the character fit.
Due to the character wearing pants, a focus on the muscles isn't as important as it would be on the arms as there is cloth covering it. This allows you some freedom as you can make the shapes more rounded without worrying about the finer muscular details.
At this stage, duplicating the limbs using the duplication tab in the subtool menu, and mirroring them using the mirror tab in the deformation menu allows you to give the character their full set of limbs. I find it easier to leave the hands and feet until a little bit later on so that you can add the fingers or finer details of shoes or feet before duplicating.
Now you have all 4 limbs blocked out, they are ready for you to add more detail and break the symmetry later on (once the torso is more detailed and can fit them better).
With the legs being well blocked in, I merge and dynamesh them to the body, this allows me to work on them better with the torso being included in the design as one large subtool. This allows for the style of the character to remain consistent throughout.
Bringing the limbs together with the torso lets you incorporate clothing too, as you can visualize how the pieces can hang off the body you have blocked out. with these shorts, I intend to have them held up by suspenders over the shoulders of the character, so combining the legs to the torso allowed it all to flow a lot better.
At this stage, switching between subtools to constantly update and add details is a great way to make sure you don't fatigue yourself on one section. I often find that going back to the face after doing the body or limbs is a nice change, and allows you to better visualize important features you want to include in each section.
Doing the same with the arms, it allows for further development of the character, as evidenced by the change in the upper torso. Combining the arms with the torso showed me that the upper body needed a bit of a rearrange in order to fit the muscular arms that I chose to give the character.
Doing this at these stages is good, as you don't want to be too far along with the character and come to realize that changes need to be made. This current stage is good for implementing changes as the detailing is still at a simplistic form. As I mentioned at the start, making a character is like looking through a camera with varying focal lenses, changes to the shape and form bring more detail in itself before the finer details are added.
As stated with the last image, combining areas of the character can often make the rest of the body seem to line up with a different approach for the other areas. For this character, combining the muscular arms with the fatty body brought up the idea of a strong man type character rather than just a fat grubby man. These sort of changes are common in character design and should not be ignored unless you are following strict concept art.
When you reach a stage you are comfortable with regarding the head, I find it useful to take a picture of the character into photo and plan out how you want the scars or skin blemishes to look so you can gauge how they look before you apply them.
Even though I didn't use the scars from this plan, I used the placement of the moles to create a more lifelike appearance. The scars looked strange on the character after implementing them in ZBrush, and so I opted to not include them. These decisions are important in character design, unless you are working under strict concept, as it ensures that your character looks exactly as you intend it to.
For me, the hands are the most difficult part to get right when matching the style of the rest of the character. I often find it easiest to consistently use my own hands as reference for shape and size. After you are happy with the shape of the hands, use the duplicate subtool button in the subtool menu, and mirror the hand using the mirror button in the deformation menu. After this, merge the two hands to the body in the subtool menu, and dynamesh the full subtool and blend the shapes together. By now, your character should start to come together. For Eddie, the only thing left is to add his feet, and then I can start diving into detailing and breaking the symmetry.
After the feet and detailing, this character will be painted using the polypaint tools in ZBrush.
At this stage if you're happy with the detailing and the breaking of symmetry you can begin to get ready to paint the character.
Choose a material best suited to how you want the character to look, for this set of characters, I've chosen SkinShade4 as it gives a sort of cartoonish gloss to the character, while also being suitable for both skin and clothing.
Using the polypaint tool, you can apply texture and material to your character. For Eddie I have chosen to make him grubby, dirty and tattooed. This is only the first stage of the painting however, as the finer details still need to be included, along with the hair and the clothing.With the tattoos, I have placed them over the suspenders so that once I paint the suspenders, the tattoos appear covered by them rather than surrounding them. A useful tool for helping to polypaint is the masking tool, used by holding the left control key while painting, this allows you to mask off areas you don't want the paint to go, or you can flip the mask so that the paint only goes in the areas you've specified.
Once you are happy with your painted character, the design aspect is finished. The next steps for character creation will be getting your character ready for use in either posing, game, or animation, with the use of retopology and rigging.
After this is completed, you can use your character as you wish, posing them for screenshots or animating them too.
In order to get some fast high quality renders to post your finished character, the preview render tool is a great way to see how your character could look if properly rendered later on.
The button to activate this appears in the top right, as a sphere with BPR on the button.
It is also beneficial to experiment with the types of textures available for your characters, as sometimes they can look better with matte rather than gloss. It's always ideal to experiment with various differences in your character's appearance in order to ensure you achieve the best possible look.
