Creating Alphas Through Sculpting

Character Sculpt Process

Creature Studies

I wasn't happy with the original design of my characters face so I started drawing new deisngs. After talking to Tanya I decided to go straight into Zbrush to sculpt different faces and develop the face from there.

Starting Creature Over

I decided to start over my sculpt as a new start. I didn't like sculpting from a loose tpose as originally suggested. I came across more problems doing it that way and since I am having my creature one pose for the final (and it won't be animated) I didn't see the point of sculpting from tpose. 

Starting Over:

The adaptive skin was bunching up in his armpit and is really bad to sculpt from. So I found a tutorial on ZRemesher. ZRemesher is meant to change the topology in the sculpt to a better form. Its good for creating edgeloops etc. I used it to fix the armpit area on my sculpt.

Tutorial Used:


Sculpt after ZRemesher. Its an improvement from before. The topology in general is terrible but for sculpts it doesn't matter. If its going to be animated, the topology is really important then. 

Sculpting my Creature

Updated Timeline:

My original timeline was well set out but I got into full holiday mode around about week 4  and I haven't done a lot of work to stay up to date. So I'm shifting my timeline around a bit so I can get things done.

New Timeline:

✓Week 1:

• Write brief 
• Research
• Design character 

✓Week 2: 

• Modify character after feedback (legs, how does he walk)
• Research walk cycle, animals to base his walk/legs from

✓Week 3:

• More muscle and anatomy studies (of other animals and my character) on paper
• Draw character standing vs sitting
• Sculpting character in loose T pose (research Z pose)
• Start modeling props in Maya
• Create formative assessment PDF 

✓Week 4:

• Formative assessment 
• Research hair tutorials

✓Study Week 1:

• Model the majority of props in Maya
• Cry because you did fuck all and now you're behind

Study Week 2:

• Cont. to cry because have so much work to do this week
• Draw digital finals of character (skeleton and muscle)
• Draw my character (rough) in loose T-Pose for reference while sculpting
• Experiment with textures and colours 
• Sculpt and finish character
• Finish all props in Maya
• Add details to props in Zbrush

Week 5:

• Add hair to character and moss to certain props
• Start texturing character/props

Week 6:

• Cont. hair
• Texturing
• Tutorials on lighting

Week 7: 

• Lighting character
• Research Rendering

Week 8:

• Finish lighting
• Start rendering character (How many stills do I want to render?) 1-2

Week 9: 

• Rendering character
• Research Image compositing

Week 10:

• Finish rendering 
• Start image compositing 
• Create backgrounds in Photoshop

Week 11:

• Finalizing Image(s)
• Planning presentation speech 
• PDF presentation/ report of research
• Small project documenting technical research applied to a context

Week 12:

• Practice presentation 
• Present
• Hand in 

When it comes to uni, yes.

Modeling in Maya (props, Pots and Pans)

Props so Far: