Armored warrior in the style of Destiny/Destiny 2 by Bungie

I began with an old DND character of mine. He was a cleric dedicated to a moon goddess, and wore medium weight half-plate armor. With this in mind, I worked with the star and moon motifs, trying to keep a balance between curves and sharp points. The breastplate design is mostly placeholder, to represent the kind of carving detail I plan to implement on the armor pieces.

I originally wanted to work with a red and blue palette, but after creating the split-complimentary palette pictured, I decided that a straight complementary palette would be cleaner and worked better with the night-sky theme.

Oscar Isaac Likeness

I am also working on a bust of Oscar Isaac. Part of my goals for this project is to learn how to use xGen properly.

Through the Twitter VisibleWomen tag event, I discovered the artist _sugarbones, and this illustration. I was really inspired by it, so I reached out and asked her permission to model her drawing.

You can find sugarbones on her Twitter, her Instagram, or her website!

Maya Only - Zbrush 1st Pass - Zbrush 2nd Pass

Using Zbrush for her hair was the fastest and easiest option, so I largely left her hair alone while in Maya. I aimed to follow the illustration first, and then added some similarly flowing strands. Without a back view illustration, I just tried to match the curls and flow of the front without disrupting the illustration's silhouette too much.

Final Posing

Pistol Merged - Final Block Out - First Block Out

Hair merged and remeshed in Zbrush using Zremesher

I decided to raise her base low-poly count to optimize baking, and changed the topology of her breasts. The previous grid was creating unpleasant stars in the high-poly version when baking in Substance Painter.

Final renders and turntable done in Unreal Engine

I originally began this piece as an entry to the Sketchfab 2020 Small Creature Contest, but it spiraled into something bigger.

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One of my main goals for this piece was to practice creature fur set up. But the biggest goal was just to have fun with it, as it is a three-eyed cat.

Initial head block out, Third eye addition

Initial body block out, Anatomy correction

I decided early on to keep the head and body separate, to keep edge loop count low and easy to manage.

Teeth and Collar

It took some iteration for the fur to come together in a way that I liked. I initially added more fur than necessary, I only wanted it to break the silhouette and add some poof to the cat. Then the UV layout had to be rearranged to optimize size of hair cards without revealing how much was stacked and modular.

Final Renders for this project are now on it's own page!

For my first project of the year, I decided to work on something reflecting the theme "Resolutions."

In this case, it means one woman resolving to take a risk by making a step forward for a potential relationship.

I like to begin and work with clean topography when I can, so I extruded most of the clothing from the base mesh after I finished sculpting their bodies, and began things like their shoes in Maya where I could box-model more quickly.

It was important to me that they were cohesive, while still having their own distinct styles and personalities.

I try to spend a fair amount of time on my UV layouts, to make texturing as smooth as possible. I use a grid map to view stretching and squashing, while making the UVs as flat and square as possible so procedural textures can be used with minimal seams or editing.

Blocking in the materials, and testing out color palettes

Finalized materials, pre-subsurface scattering