Anatomy Practice

Here is some anatomy practice i did so far during the project. I've been spending from 5-20 min on these
I need to work on proportions more and the form, also I struggle with forearm muscles.
I think these in pose sculpts help the most; takes away the symmetry sculpting, forcing to sculpt muscles in different positions

Alpha Project-Slave Driver/King

This one began as a butcher idea from one of the sketches I did.  Recently I changed it because I have noticed that there is way too many butcher characters around the web that it just doesn't make it that fun, and most of them look really close.
So I decided he will be a Slave Driver/King. This gives me a lot of new ideas and inspiration.
one of the ideas I have is to give him a crown made out of  old, sharp metal pieces that are stuck in his skull; he considers himself a king of slaves after all.
Also maybe he should be wearing a suit
I will keep on sketching and trying new ideas inside zbrush. This is still a very early model, but I think I will keep the two fingers + thumb
Also I will end up changing the ears, they are too simmilar to the Goblin's ears. Ears will be the way he sees (echolocation)
The double mouth gives him a really cool creepy feel that will stay for sure

 

 

AlphaProject- Fortune Teller

Sketchfab

Fortune teller began as a sketch, and originally she was going to be more creepy looking than the final result; four arms, skull like face or zombie. In the end I decided that she should be beautiful and human.
'mysterious, gypsy, bizarre'
"Nobody visits her if there isn't a serious need for it. Nobody knows where she came from, she just showed up, or was there all along? One thing is for sure, she knows what she's doing"

Doing mostly my designing inside zbrush I thought a little bit of 2D won't hurt, and it did really help. I took the basic renders from Zbrush and did a paint over, helping me to visualize different ideas; too bad some of them didn't fit with the design/character because I really think some of them would fit her.
Just like with the goblin I wasn't sure about the head part. She was going to be bald, but then I thought of dreadlocks (even though they don't really fit with a gypsy stereotype), they fit quite well!
I made the dreadlocks using the 'insertTubeBrush' inside Zbrush, this way I could move them around the way I wanted. The next step was to Fibermesh it! Took a bit of try and error, tutorials, but I got there. However, I had to apply the fiber mesh to each dreadlock separately, making them poly heavy. I ended up deleting the fibermesh, I will comeback to it later on. I also used a noise feature on them, gives them a nice texture.
Another idea I've got from 2D concepting is giving her tattoos all over her body;mystic and religious symbols. However I'm not sure about it yet, I'm waiting for the polypainting stage to happen, so some tattoos research will be needed here.

Also tried different hair

Except the four arms, being blind, and having an eye connected to her eye patch, she is a pretty standard, human character. Four arms was just my way to make her look more unique and bizarre, and also I enjoy four arms characters. What I did was sculpting one arm and then duplicating it for each side, simple process.
As for the eye patch, I think it added some mystery to her, of how did it happen that she is blind, where does this "all see" eye artifact comes from etc. Making it I imagined it would move around, something like Alastor's Moody eye
Most importantly, she is a gypsy character, however I thought giving her all sort of medallions and hangy amulets would express her believes and expertise in her craft, even though she serves the all see eye (which doesn't necessary means God). I used insert mesh, and insert curve inside Zbrush to place the medallions etc. Some of them I made myself, but also some of them were borrowed from the zbrush central.

The triple skirt began as one, made inside Maya with a help from the cloth simulation (to get easy folds here and there), then after I've got inspired by my reference, I ended up adding more layers to it, making it less boring. Also the idea was to make the skirt long to the ground, so when she moves, she would do it gracefully and with ghost like smoothness.
The cape wasn't originally there, but I felt like something is missing, and it fit in just fine. I went through the same process like with the skirt (maya, cloth simulation), after that i extruded it for some thickness.

So naturally i had to give her tarot cards (will add more)
For some of the jewelry i improvised or just googled "gypsy jewelry"










Here is the current, almost final result. I'm really not sure about the colors, maybe I will do some 2D work to figure that one out. So far I'm really satisfying how she is turning out

AlphaProject- The Goblin

SketchFab

My first attempt was with the goblin and I'm quite happy how it turned out! There was so many possibilities with him, but I decided to pick an alchemist as his trade, it fits well with the troll market. As I was watching through the Zbrush Summit presentations, one lecturer gave a tip of using 3 phrases design for any character.

Grumpy, loner, master of his craft

So I used these three words to come up with a little bit of a character design to help me feel the character. (I have used this method for all three characters)
"Grumpy and old, nobody sure how old though, Everyday comes out of his lab, down to the market trying to sell a potion or two. Maybe it would have been easier if he wasn't such a jackass to anyone trying to buy them"
I haven't done much of 2D , I prefered to concept inside Zbrush, however I did happen to go to photoshop from time to time to have quick thoughts when I struggled

Here I wasn't sure of how will the Goblin's head look like, what will be covering it. I liked him behind bald, and having a hood, however for some time I thought about keeping the goggles.

Moving on I began sculpting the goblin starting off a sphere, my favourite way to go about in zbrush. I didn't screenshot too often in the beginning, was too into the process.
I use a mix of insert brush, extrude, and sculpting, that's all there is to it really.
 In the first few you can see me experimenting with the head gear and the ears. I thought the ears look too..boring? I can't really tell what was wrong about them.
Other thing that I threw out is the thing at the top of the backpack, it made the backpack have too much. What it was is a portable potion maker; pour ingredients on the top, pour it into the glass later; something like that.

 I was aiming for long arms, BUT NOT THAT LONG. I did shorten them up later on

So in the end I fixed proportions , the hood which I made in maya (this way I worked out a exact thickness and topology i wanted). I also had to fix the symmetry of the face. Above you can see that his eyebrow was raised a bit (helped me with giving him a feel) 

.Then I used noise feature inside Zbrush to add some cool texture to the surface of my models. Later on my friend suggested I give the Goblin a beard, so I tried it out using fibermesh and I like it a lot, gives him this old, wise and untidy look which is exactly what i aimed for. 

The face did change quite a bit through the progress. I kept coming back to it aging it, fixing proportions; just giving it a fresh eye

Using some basic polypainting I gave him some colour pretty early on, I like to do it to give the character some life, just like posing which I did when I was happy with the model.

Furthermore I added some leafs and potion vials. I spread the leafs along the string edge using the nanomesh feature , which was very helpful.  

If you look closely you will see a forearm, chain mail piece on there. I struggled with it a bit; I was using micromesh which takes a mesh and replaces another mesh's topology with that shape. I used a decimated ring (had to bear in mind that there will be several of them had to keep the poly count to minimum) and I couldn't get the orientation of it right for some time, worked out in the end! 

Final results!

Nice renders!

Alpha Project- Character ideas and exploration

I chose to use Zbrush for so many reasons: it's powerful, flexible, fun to use, fast, and helps me visualize and bring characters to life. Also I like to stay in Zbrush most of the time so I began brainstorming ideas inside zbrush. By all means these aren't anywhere near finished or pretty, these are Zbrush sketches done using dynamesh

Here is one of my favourite ones! the only reason why i didn carry on with it is because I already had a humanoid, skinny character. This idea presents a tall, skinny man with skin disease, looking unconcious. The cool thing about him is that he is controlled by an imp (over there on his head!) that grew into his head, taking over his brain

 Alien like character? Doesn't talk in man tongue. Not really sure what else I can say about him, other than I was aiming for an alien character













This one was going to be an engineer character that would be able to fix any machine! I enjoyed it so much that I let myself carry on with the body and basic clothes. After all it didn't trigger  and I moved on

 here is an idea for a nurse character. Doesnt talk, movies quietly and smoothly. I enjoyed this one as well, and perhaps I will develop her further one day. These nurses are the best you could hope for, will heal any damage you may have; however if you somehow will upset them, they will unleash a terrifying scream, like a bird...then just chop you to pieces or something, blind you?

 I think this one here was going to be a bodyguard character. Bulky, strong, solid looking. Moved on from it pretty quickly

Another one of my favourite characters. Here I was aiming for the character to be overweight, and weird. As a result I made a pig , with skin disease, chopped off feet, and pants. Was quite fun to do it

Later on I decided that sketching in 2D will be useful as well, though I really think I'm not as good at it as I would like to.  You can see them below, and if you can't identify some stuff, don't worry; most of these sketches are supposed to only mean anything to me, my quick thoughts floating to the paper. 

There in the middle you can see the (originaly "the butcher") Slaver Driver/King. His creepy look got me!

Here is a fortune teller. The reason why i picked her as one of my final characters is because she is different, original, and interesting. 

I just think the bird nurse is really cool

Goblin head ideas. I decided he has to be old and grumpy

More butcher exploration. I like the look of the clothes I could do for him, but I think some of it will make it to the Slave Driver wardrobe