Dario Bruni-2024

1) Ecthelion's sword

Hey everyone! I'd like to show you this project where I approached texturing and shading. This project is the reproduction of a render made by an artist which you can find on Deviantart. His name is Horhe Soloma.

The goal of this project was to reproduct Echtelion's sword with an elven vial next to it. Both of them are located inside a fantasy environment that looks like a cathedral.  

01. Reference

Here you can see that I've gathered a bunch of references, dividing them in several categories. Some of them were for the environment, whilst the others were focused on the hero assets.

02.Modeling

During the modeling phase I worked on Maya and I encountered one of the most difficult but interesting obstacles of the project: creating good volumes for the hero assets, especially for the sword.

Underneath you can see my UV's. As you can see, most of them are very big if you compare them to the hero assets, therefore I decided to make really small the shells that I knew that wouldn't been part of the visible section of the scene from my camera.

03. Texturing

The most difficult section of texturing, that I've made using Substance Painter, was definitely the one I've faced when I started to create metallic surfaces. Due to the extreme reflection from these surfaces of the lights , it's been really tough to create a realistic metallic material that would not damage my lighting. 

04. Lighting

Initially I thought that two or three lights would be enough for the lighting of this scene. I was wrong. When I returned on Maya, I had to insert several lights for recreating that particular mood and atmosphere. Moreover, I had to fake the blue light from the vial by inserting some blue directional lights.

05. Rendering

Finally we move to the renders, made using  Maya and V-Ray. I chose to try another camera that could be a little bit more dynamic and I also made a close-up of  a detail from the sword. I really wanted to show much more clearly the hilt and the sheath of this elegant but, at the same time, deadly weapon.

2) El imbriaego peregrino, the sea elf

The creation of a strange fantasy creature inspired by Italian mythology.

I'd like also to show you my first project done at Skyup Academy: a digital sculpt of a strange creature that I've decided to call "Imbriaego peregrino".

This character is inspired by some creatures from the italian mythology like "Il mazariòl" or "El Salvaneo".  I wanted to create a goofy and a little bit scary character.

His story tells of a drunk shepherd from Genova, who threw empty alcoholic beverage bottles into the sea and who was punished by the spirits of the seas, which decided to transform him in an ugly creature that had to live the rest of his life inside the environment that he polluted.

Downhere there are my final renders, made using Maya and Vray.

01. References

A crucial step during this project was to gather a good amount of appropriate references.

I've chosen to divide my Pure Ref in different sections, in order to be as organised as possible.

My goal was to create a mixture of very different animals so this choice came up very useful during the fase of digital sculpting.

02. Creation of the concept

Underneath we have some of my first sketches made on paper. As you can see, I focused myself on studying deep fishes.

After some trials, I chose the pelican eel as the animal to put on the character's body to make a strange head.

03. Traditional sculpting

Eventually, I moved from 2D to 3D with the maquette made in Monster Clay.

It was the first time that I used that kind of material and I can assert quite firmly that I've never sculpted with anything similar before.

It's started out by making a sort of rig by means of a steel wire. Then, I started to create primary volumes with tape and steel foil. The next step was to add the clay layer by layer until I reached a result that i could considarate good and coherent to the sketches. 

04. Digital sculpting

Finally, it was the moment to start modelling in Zbrush.

First of all, I've made a blockout of the biggest shapes and then I continued the sculpt adding more and more details.

This character is almost always drunk so I thought that it could be a good idea to give him a wine flask. On top of that, I would say that the most effective parts of the final sculpt are the pose, the expression of the eyes and the portion of flabby skin on the chest.

Here's a little detail of the skin on the tail. It's inspired by morays leather.

And here we have my finals renders. It took a while but I can say that I managed to reach a result that I am proud of.

Thank you for your attention!

I'd really like to thank Skyup Academy for the teachings and for following me through this wonderful path.

If you'd like to see more artworks like this you can follow me on Instagram and Linked-In from the following accounts:

Instagram: dario_bruni_art

Linked-In: Dario Bruni