Leïa COURTOIS - Character Artist - 2024

In order to show you my best works, I have selected 3 artworks. Each of them have a similar pipeline that I will describe later, but for each art, I have focused on specific skills that I wanted to improve : 3D animation, props and damaged skin.

Why this scene?

This art is very special to me because it is the best version of my very first 3D sculpt. I am a big fan of Terminator for a long time and after seeing some breakdown from "Terminator - Genesis" where the body and the face of young Arnold Schwarzenegger is fully CGI, I wanted to try myself to recreated the Arrival scene with my skills in Sculpting, Texturing, Lighting, Grooming and Animation.
So here is the pipeline I have followed for this one and for other creations of mine :

- SCULPTING :
I used various references from the Terminator and other Arnold's movies for the sculpting process. As I am working on Blender 3D for 6 years now, I have developed a good understanding of the software and its functionalities so I was able to create my own brushes and sculpted as quickly and easily as in Z-brush.

When I got the good shapes, I have added the details like skin pores and wrinkled and I have backed them as Normal map.

-TEXTURING:
Then, I have textured the model, always with pictures as references. The Albedo & the Cavity map is from 3D Scan Store Metahuman pack and I have edited them manually with Krita. I have mainly adjusted the colors of the skin and the lips and created the Roughness and specular map.

Blender has a good functionality called "Geometry Node" that can create high quality hair. It is pretty close to X-gen but with less issues. So I have combed them with a lot of precision to get the perfect result. I have also added hair on the face.

-RIGGING & ANIMATION:
The rigging was done with the great Addon auto-rig pro for Blender and I manually edited the weight paint of the bones.

The animation was one of the hardest part. I had to make him ALIVE but keep the feeling of robot/cyborg of the character. Fortunately, I was lucky : I didn't have to create blend shape for this animation.

This is during this step that I needed the most the video of the arrival from the original movie. I wanted to get the closest lighting to the reference. I have used an HDRI that is an image from the movie. And then added various lights around him to match the luminosity.

For the compositing, I have added some contrast and did some color correction.

ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER - The TERMINATOR

Battle Damaged

Why this scene?

This scene is following the previous project. I wanted something harder and with more details for this project. So I wanted to try to recreate the 1984 make-up in CGI as the practical effect was not completely accurate because the only way is to put a T-800 skull inside the head. The goal was to get a realistic result with more difficult textures (bloods, injuries, etc...).

As it's again Arnold Schwarzenegger, I have used the same model and textures and I have edited them.

-SCULPTING :
First, I needed a T-800's endoskull model under my Arnold head. Unfortunately, the T-800 skull didn't fit exactly to Arnold face so I adapted the skull.
After that, I have edited the Arnold model to recreate the damage on the skin and the holes.

-TEXTURING & GROOMING:
When everything is good, I have edited the maps. In the original movie, the T-800 skin was necrotizing so I had to make it grey, livid... in one word : dead. And of course, I have added blood.

For the Groom, I had to change the hairstyle as the hair is supposed to have been burned on the top. And I deleted some hair where the T-800 skull appears.

-LIGHTING & COMPOSITIONG:
To recreate the good Lighting and ambience, I put many assets and props to create the truck interior and like for the previous project, I used a scene of the movie to get the HDRI and I added lights

You can see here a Look Dev of the model :

ROBERT PATRICK - TERMINATOR 2 : Judgment Day

3D ANIMATION WITH PROPS

Why this scene?

If both are cold and determined, Arnold is a pure symbol of power and muscles and Robert Patrick has a totally different way to be scary and vicious. And I wanted to create the 2 greatest villains of this great saga.

The process was the same than for the 2 previous art :
- I have sculpted everything from nothing based on reference
- I have textured with maps from 3D Scan Store and edited with Krita
- I have groomed with Geometry Nodes in Blender
- I have lighted with HDRI from the movie and a few other lights and I have improved the render with color grading and contrast

The extra step for this project, compared to the previous ones, is the addition of props (helmet, glasses, etc...).
Based on the latest scene from Terminator 2, I have modeled and textured the helmet and I have edited the others ones. Then I have added them to the rig and it was done!

Thank you!

Thank you for reading me and giving me the occasion to show my best works and passion. If you want to see more of my work, you can take a look on my Artsation or my Linkedin Page.

Good luck to all the challengers and thanks to the Judges and Sponsors !!