Turntable!


Check out my turntable here ^ :)

SEMESTER 1 - High Poly Character 

Model Sheet

Art Sheet 

Weapon 

Machete sword! 

Through the development of creating my character, I began to build personality through creating and thinking about how he and his armour should look, how his items and clothing suites in his own environment. I decided he needed a machete type weapon to cut down thick foliage in the jungle and to protect himself against wild beasts. I created the base mesh in max and thrown it in Zbrush to beat up!

Material Study - Front & Side

Duel wield! (haha)

I am still yet to pose this character until I properly retopo all the individual meshes as it would be very difficult to move each and individual object at the amount of polygon it has (21 million!). When submissions are finished I will properly render him with a striking pose with an environment piece.   

Alpha Mask Technique 

When sculpting in many details in can become tedious at times as replicating every scratch from a metal by hand would be very tiresome. Using alphas helps you speed up this process by adding black and white masks to your  objects which you then trace in or deflate (many other methods) , depending on the situation.

Armour 

Here is the final result of the amour. Once I had added the Celtic details, using a custom made alpha that i extracted from photo reference which needed alot of refinement! I moved on to detailing the objects with scuffs and bumps to simulate metal damage. Using a combination of alphas and brushes,  I accomplished these results : 

Hair

Hair was a difficult topic to deal with as it can be quite a hassle to deal with in 3D as there are many different ways of going about it. At first I decided to just sculpt it directly on the mesh to see different variations an concepts. At first he was going to be bold, but I felt he needed something on his head to keep him warm in the cold conditions of the jungle. I played with a bun and beard combination but didn't feel like it suited the Celtic theme. 

Beard and Bun Concept

Full figure with style. Added sticks to support his bun.

Blocked in the beard and the beginning  of fibermesh

Final result

I began trying out a new tool in Zbrush called "Fibermesh" which allowed me to easily create strands to manipulate and cut it like real hair. I really enjoyed properly learning this process as you really do have to act like a hairdresser haha. Further on in the pipeline will allow me to export these fibers for more use. When I added the mow-hawk it really gave him personality. ( In a badass way) 

Face

Beginning of the sculpt pulled the neck out and began to sculpt out the basic landmarks. Nose, Jaw, Forehead 

Block in major shapes using the Clay Build-up brush.

Using the smooth tool with the trim dynamic brush to create facial planes. 

Adding subdivisions, pushing, pulling and sculpting carefully at this stage

Insertion of the eyes. 

For some reason he was beginning to look very pirate like. I fixed this by moving his jaw back a bit, as it was a bit too large and almost too exaggerated.  I also added jewelry to his ears to give him more character. I really like the rich golded type armour that he has on. I see him as an Honorable veteran in his time. Almost seen as a frightening  hero with such brute force.  

Side view of early finalizing. 

Blocked in a rough version of his beard, 

Here is the final result of his face. The earlier versions of his scar were far to exaggerated as scars aren't usually as deep. His nose is a little smaller now as I thought previous version were far to big. I didn't want to go for an over stylized face. I wanted to keep him believable enough to be a character that would fitting in a realistic setting in his time. Im very happy with the results. When I texture him next semester I will add skin pores and much finer details.

 

Celtic Armour Added! Dont want to bombard it with too many details but iIwill scruff it up to match the quality of the shin pads and arm greaves. As the should pad I would like to be a light leather armour. 

Full body view as all parts can be seen. Im very happy with the results. I found some old Celtic patterns and fixed them up to  be able to be stamped into the armour using the mask alpha tool. (imported as PSD.) and then inflate the masked area to engraved the pattern.  

Nearly done and I am very happy with my results so far. I find really studying anatomy closely will get you that one step further to looking believable, not extremely realistic. just believable. Keep you're shapes simple and don't go off in tangents, Just focus on each goal. I now need to figure out his true personality through his face and hair!

Material Paint over - Photoshop

Armour Update! 

Here is the shoulder pad design. I decided to keep it a light leather type material as it would be quite painful running through the forest hunting for beasts with clunky armour! My idea is to add the Celtic knots and patterns within his armour and add scratches to suggest close calls with big cats.

Here I've added fluff in the ends of the armour to keep him warm on cold days and a tooth neckless to highlight his "wildness". 

Proportions + Armour  Update! 

Before Change

After Change 

This past week I have been working on my Celts main shapes, armour and proportions. I felt like his previous build was far too under defined for the characters archetype. Bulking his muscles up matches the more aggressive and brutish warrior that Celts once were. I decided to give him the bodybuilder Arnold/Cohan type body with a massive upper torso. This new adjustment made a massive difference and shows how powerful he is.

My next step was to shift my focus onto his armour and come up with a design mixed from my previous concepts. I started by basic box modeling armour pieces around the low res character in 3ds Max, positioning and roughly shaping the Armour. I didn't worry to much how it looked at this stage as I would throw everything into Zbrush to continue shaping. I believe most of the characters story would be captured in the armour from patterns, details and scratches. I found an image of a golden buckle shaped as a tiger/cat that looked very interesting. I thought this would be a good idea to implement as it could show he is a wild hunter!  

Same again, for the arm greaves. Modeled in 3ds-Max and brought in ready for sculpting and adjustment. I am really enjoying creating this character and love his design so far!

Early concept of the boots. 

Looking into Celtic culture is a very interesting topic to look at. There are many different types of Celtic culture. These include Ancient Celtic Culture, Celtic revival and Gaelic culture. Celtic art is a difficult term to define, covering huge expanse of time, geography and cultures. The main area of Celtic history I would like to base my characters designs on would be the culture of the European Iron age around 1000 BC. Celtic Knots are patterns representing ropes or threads tied in a knot. Many Knots are continuous, with no loose ends, and these are also called gordian knots or Gordic knots. Spirals, step patterns, and key patterns are dominant motifs in Celtic art before the christian influence on the Celts. I would like to replicate these patterns on my Celt to give him story, personality and character.

Drawings!

Im not the best at drawing, but I had fun creating these character concepts!

Massive brute torso with huge shoulder pads. 

Ranger type warrior with sword and bow.

Shoulder Pad designs

Large brute face with a Celtic type crown 

Kahl drogo type design