Carlos Rodríguez Manzanedo/ The Rookies 2024

Introduction

Welcome to my Entry to the Rookies 2024! I am Carlos Rodríguez, a 3D artist from Huelva, Spain. In 2018 I started a Fine Arts Degree in the University of Seville (Spain). The Degree was mainly focus on traditional art, however during the last year of the career I had the opportunity to study a subject related to the application of the technology to art, working for the first time with 3D softwares. I became fascinated with the 3D Art and so I decided to join the Animum Creativity Advanced School which could allow me to be a 3D character artist in the near future.

The time I have been studying at animum has helped me a lot to develope my skills in 3D art. I started my studies in Animum in 2022 with "the Fundamentals of 3D Production Course", At the beginning I barely had any knowledge about 3D Art, but overtime and thanks to Animum I could improved a lot. After finishing "the Fundamentals of 3D Production Course" in 2023,  I decided to continue my studies at Animum with the "Master in 3D Character Modelling", where I was going to learn everything I needed to know about 3D Character Modelling, how to make a videogame character, a cartoon character, a character for VFX, etc.

Now in 2024, I am finishing my studies at Animum, and I thought It could be great to share some of my  best works from the Master and also from the Fundamentals of 3D Production Course. I hope you like them! Feel free to comment about my entry.

Study of Men Busts

This is a collection of three male busts, the first bust was made for Animum Creativity Advanced School, and  because of that I had the opportunity to be tutored by Miguel Ángel Carriquí in the modelling part  and Manuel Mejías González in the texturing and rendering part. Thanks to both of them for their support throught this project.

The second and third bust were two personal projects that I made to study the ethnic differences and to complement my studies at Animum.  The first bust  is a caucasian man in his 30s, the second one is a black man around the same age and the third one is a young japanese man.

To make these Busts I used Zbrush for the sculpting part, later I made the topology and UVs in Maya, the hair  was created with Xgen and the rendering and lighting part were made with Arnold.

Hope you like them!

First Bust: "A caucasian man bust".

Second Bust: "A black man bust".

Third Bust: "Japanese Man bust".

"Matt Souza", Realtime Character for Videogames.

Concept Art by Luis Filipe.

The second project is a 3D Character for a Videogame, it was the last work of the "Master in 3D Character Modelling". For this final project  I chose a Concept Art by Luis Filipe, he made this Design for a book named "Slaves of Hope", (Escravos da Esperança) by Jonathan Souza, a Brazilian author. This character named "Matt Souza" looks like a  police or a soldier who has a strong physique with a really stylized body. The main reason I chose this character is because  I really like how it looks like a character from a videogame like Resident Evil (a franchise that I love).

PROCESS

The first step that I took for this character was modelling it in zbrush, I was really inspired by the 3d models of games like Fornite or Valorant, so I took a lot of inspiration on how stylized the character of these games are. then I made the retopology in Maya (I couldn't surprass the quantity of 100.000 triangles), to later create the UV sets. The texturing process  was made in Substance 3D Painter. 

The hair strands were made with Xgen and then they were modified with zbrush, the haircards were baked with Xnormals and modified with Photoshop. I used the Transpose Tool  in zbrush for the pose , and for the Rendering part I chose to do a few Renders in Arnold and a Turnaround video in Marmoset Toolbag 4.

Thanks my mentor who taught me so much about creating a videogame character : Luis David Zavala García.

Render in Arnold :

Marmoset Render and Zbrush Turnaround:

"A witch named Melon", Cartoon Character for Animation Film

Concept Art by Loan (Aohmin) Estevez

This project was also made for the 3D Character Modeling Master of Animum. We had to create a Cartoon Character for Animation films. I chose a Concept Art made by Loan (Aohmin) Esteve, this character is a  little witch, her name is Melon and she has an enchanted hat named Mario. I really love how quirky, charismatic and joyful the original design looks, thats the reason I chose this character and my main objective was to achieve the same essence when converted to 3D.

This 3D model was modeled in zbrush and Maya, I also used Maya for making the retopology and the UVs. The textures were made with Substance 3D Painter. For the smoke that's coming out of the hat I used the Maya Fluids, and for the rendering part I used Arnold and Marmoset Toolbag 4.

A big thank you to Luis Arizaga Rico for helping me with the modelling, blendshapes and the retopology, and to  Luis David Zavala García for his help with the texturing.

Fairy Tail House

Concept by STAR CG

Following the cartoony style of the last character, this next project was my final piece of work  for the Fundamentals of 3D Production Course . It is a really cartoony medieval house  based on the  Concept Art of STAR CG.

The modelling and the UVs were made with Maya, the textures were made with Substance 3D Painter and the render and lighting  with Arnold (there is a short video that shows all the process behind this project).