Elena Borzyk Character Portfolio 2023-2024

Presenting a collection of projects completed throughout my Masters at Animum Creativity School and polished afterwards.

I am happy to publicly introduce Pandereto McShaker, my first finished cartoon character, ready to rig and animate. Based on a concept by Alexey Baydakov.

Let’s hear a bit of his background story. Back in his country the Mostachio Police was after him for having the gorgeous mustache you see, for such a thick and fantastic mustache is absolutely illegal and should be shaved. But Pandereto loves his mustache and knows the appeal of it, so to avoid further persecution, he has gone into hiding and eagerly awaits in Cadiz, Spain, the day his mustache is legalized again.

I'll present the path I followed in the creation of the character, a path I now see with hindsight after finishing the whole project.

Starting a new character feels like meeting somebody new, I need some time to get to know the things that make them who they are. Once I've got to know them enough I can start working on the blocking and sculpting.

Getting to know the character consists in analyzing the shapes, maybe doing some extra drawings to help me understand what is beneath the first impression. Even inventing a background story if there isn’t any makes the character more complete. These early stages are all about fun, familiarity and motivation for this new project. I spend some time separating the different elements and trying to anticipate as much as I can all the steps that will lead me to the final version of the character. Of course I am aware that it is impossible to anticipate all the problems we can face, but this helps me to be organized and methodological all along the process.

To get a satisfying result on this model I struggled with the asymmetrical parts of the design, mostly with the shape of the head, that worked great on 2D but didn’t work at all on my first 3D interpretation.

I sculpted almost the whole character and his assets in Zbrush and used Maya for the retopology and Uvs. For the vest I used Marvelous Designer. I thought it was a great opportunity to use a simple-shaped design to get to know the program for the first time. I am looking forward to using it again for more complicated clothes.

Here is a timelapse of the modeling process so you can enjoy some steps of it, from the hair-raising first approach to the final model I am very happy to have achieved.

The shading and texturing stage was the one I enjoyed the most. I loved being meticulous and trying to achieve the look I had pictured.

I rebuilt the vest three times, trying different techniques to make it look hand-knitted. I tried to sculpt the knits in Zbrush but it wasn’t very practical if I wanted to change something in later phases. So I decided to do the entire knitting work in Substance Painter, so I could go back to it if needed in the shading part. Here is when I decided I was going to add some grooming at the end.

For the skinning I had a great time adding details such as freckles on the face and the shoulders and some red-hue due to sun exposure (let’s remember he lives in Cádiz).

With the rigging and posing I also tried three different techniques to arrive at a satisfying result.

First I posed Pandereto roughly in Zbrush, resculpting the parts that were deformed and trying to fix the broken topology. But it didn’t work for me. The posing was rigid and I wasn’t able to move the character as much as I wanted.

Then I did a rig with Zspheres to have a more flexible movement but it wasn’t working either. The textures were too deformed and the time it was taking to fix them wasn’t worth it.

Finally I decided I needed an actual rig to be able to pose it as I wanted. I did some research and decided to learn a little bit of Blender to use the autorig plug-in.

For the grooming I worked with Interactive Xgen in Maya

For the different  blendshapes and expressions I created a collection of keyshapes separating the face in four groups; mouth, nose, eyes, and forehead. The nose was a late addition, I found it a funny detail for the anger and disgust expressions.

Some of the keyshapes were also divided into left and right side of the face thus enabling asymmetrical expressions

All of them were made directly in Maya, so I could easily try the keyshapes modifications on the model. It was important to check them because of the grooming deformation. I needed to be sure that the groom density moved correctly.

I wanted a lighting that brings the best out of the character. I started with a simple set, more “clinical”, to show all the details. With the next lighting set I wanted to add some storytelling, put Pandereto in a context, and use it as a front page. The following images show three sets that worked for me.

Seeker 13 is a real-time  optimized character based on a series of concepts by Dany Diez, all retro-tech fiction-looking. I chose Seeker 13 because it doesn’t have many assets which made it an ideal candidate for the work I wanted to do.

This time to guide you through my process, as I have already shown you an entire workflow, I'm going to focus mainly on the parts I struggled with the most, the ones I did differently, and the ones I found stimulating.

My first approach was doing a rough front and back concept to match the proportions. Then, as I did with Pandereto, I separated the different parts and assets.There wasn't any information regarding materials or shader in the concept, so I looked for real objects that could match my character interpretation, so I could use them as main references and build from there.

I used Zbrush for the high poly and Maya for the retopology. I started with some anatomical references from a Gerudo modeling, a character from one of the old Zelda games. They matched with what I had in mind for the body underneath the clothes. When I was sculpting I struggled with the face design as there isn’t much information in the concept and it looked a little bit humanoid/alien. I spent many hours trying to get the finish I wanted. I couldn’t find many references that resembled the final character I was working towards, so it was almost a creative process of trial and error.

The texturing was made in Substance painter. This time I worked with Uvs Sets and materials: one for the head, hand and some assets, the second one for the clothes and the last one for the rest of the assets.

The making of the hair was a challeging part of the process. After a thorough research of different hair workflows I chose to do the haircards textures in Fibershop and used a plug-in called Gs cards to place the haircards in Maya.

I divided my character hair in four main parts:

- Shaved Hair. I made this part by texturing it in Substance.

- Transition Hair. Composed by little straight cards placed along the hairline.

- Curly Hair. I placed the curly cards layer over layer changing the orientation and the sizes. With this I was trying to achieve the volume and the messy-looking effect I had seen in the references.

- Straight Hair. Mainly the zone of the fringe.

This is it! Thanks for taking the time to see my entire work

You can find me on: Artstation and Linkedin

Have a good day! :)