Character Art - Legend of Dragoon | Dart Feld pt.1

 

High-poly sculpt in Zbrush 

Front and back

Another personal piece I started to improve my character modeling skills. This is a work in progress. The body and face are far along. 

For the armor, clothes, and hair I execute a work flow I picked up from watching 3D Character Artist and Tutor Nikolay Naydenov. I've come to call it a 3D sketch.

    What is a 3D Sketch?

Again not an official term, it's just what I call it. I make a copy of the body and delete its lower subdivisions. I then sculpt everything on it. All the clothes and accessories you see in the images above is one subtool. I use dynamesh when I run out of resolution. The result is a rough sketch of the entire outfit before I sculpt the individual parts.

    Why work like this?

Well before watching Nikolay's tutorial. Intricate looking outfits always overwhelmed me. So many items to keep track of and there always seemed to be another part you haven't done yet. And that looming dread of the entire thing looking like crap on a plate once you finish.

This technique changed everything for me. Everything you see above minus that actual body was sculpted in a day or two. That kind of speed would've been impossible for me otherwise. I'm blocking it out but treating the individual components as one sculpture. Like a traditional sculpture. They don't model individual subtools and put them together, it's all one piece. And this phase is really fun. Don't be fooled by how intricate it looks from a distance. It is very sloppy and loose.

My goals are: making sure everything that needs to be there is there, size and proportion, and overall appeal. Once that is all locked down, it's just a matter of labor. I can mindlessly work, knowing the art direction has been taken care of.

Female Rouge Character

 

3D sketching was invaluable for the Female Rouge Character project, the first time I ever implemented it into my workflow. After 3d sketching the outfit, I immediately saw a problem. With the several layers of cloth, the character looked much bulkier than I had intended. I tend to sculpt women with more meat on them than current popular convention so I wasn't surprised I made that blunder. Having a design to match, I slimmed her down so the layers of clothes could slim with her. That would've been an absolute nightmare to do with 10-15 individual subtools.

I'm sure I've explained it poorly. Here is a link to the course where I picked it up from

https://www.udemy.com/course/female-character-creation-in-zbrush/