Character Art Journey

The Star Merchant

Retired from his days of traveling the galaxy the Star Merchant has now settled down in a cosy shop looking to sell his goods.

I worked on this character as a Live Brief from Flix Interactive. The goal was to design and make a stylised merchant/shopkeeper and I decided to make a Star Merchant in the style of Sea of Thieves. 

From the start I looked into ideas for a Star Merchant or Star Fisherman, exploring fisherman and astronaut aesthetics as well as what would make the character look like a merchant.

After a few rounds of feedback and some iteration in 3d the final design was decided upon. Elements like the gloves and tongs were added to show how he might be handling the heat of the magical stars.

The high poly sculp was completed in ZBrush. I focused a lot on chunky sculpting and trimmed edges as seen in the Sea of Thieves art style.

The low poly retop was completed in Maya and the Unwrap inside 3ds Max. I then took it into Substance Painter for texturing.

Display sheets of my Uv unwraps and textures

Other assets included the plinth, jars and stars to help bring the scene together. The whole scene was then rendered in unreal engine. 

You can find this project on Art Station here: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/NynOlD

Apprentice Abigail 

Apprentice Abigail is a stylised project inspired by this concept art https://www.artstation.com/artwork/39QxWA , this was the first completely self directed project I worked on so I wanted to pick a concept that inspired me. Throughout the process I made changes to the character to fill in areas like the back and adding details like having the feet and tail sticking out of the bag. 

My high poly was modelled in ZBrush before moving into Maya and 3ds Max for retop and unwrap. 

Texturing in Substance painter, using lots of paint layers as well as brushstroke tiling textures painted in photoshop.

The concept art and some of my planning and research behind the project. 

One thing I wanted to focus on with this project was learning how to effectively render my work, I took some time to research into rendering inside Zbrush, setting up lights and custom materials. In Unreal Engine I learnt how to use the movie render queue and console commands to increase the quality of my renders. This meant I could take everything into photoshop and create a unified look over the project.

You can find this project on Art Station here: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/YB9BQK

JAILBIRD

Player Character for a group game JAILBIRD. You play an imprisoned bird working to escape the prison, each night complete tasks to get yourself closer to escape and avoid the enemies that want to keep you there.

Concept art work was done by August Chamberlain who I worked alongside to define the art direction of the game.

Concept art by August Chamberlain https://www.artstation.com/gustymoss

Visual influences for the game included It Takes Two, Self Loss and Sea of Thieves. We wanted the character to be bright and saturated in the prison environment. This would help visually convey how out of of place they were and emphasise the need for escape.

You can find this project on Art Station here: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/elYm6G

Apocalypse Character

This project was inspired by Naughty Dog's The Last of Us. As part of this project we used 3d scans of ourselves and out clothing to create a realistic game ready character.

We were able to get our heads bodies and accessories scanned with a variety of 3d scanners. These then went into ZBrush for reconstruction and clean up. This included splitting layers of clothing as well as modelling areas like the hands from scratch.

The big challenge on this project was the hair cards. I downloaded this pack from Art Station and set them up inside 3ds Max. 

 https://www.artstation.com/marketplace/p/MJPjz/game-ready-slickback-undercut-viking-hairstyle-man?utm_source=artstation&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=homepage&utm_term=marketplace

You can find this project on Art Station here: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/el6KX6