Game Characters: A September Update

Hey you guys,

Early update this month which is both a blessing and a curse. As we get closer to the holidays for the students we have to push back a few days of classes each month. Meaning that during this time students are having to do the same amount of work in 3 to 4 days less time than anyone. Which sounds menial in size but with two classes it can really add up.

Speaking of two classes I intend on making a separate post about the other class, Texture Painting & Sculpting.

So what did I even do?

Sculpting, and a great deal of it as well. Everything here is from the final week of class from screenshot to final render. Each week we practiced sculpting certain portions of the body in Zbrush, it was our choice to do either male or female anatomy. We practiced with different techniques as to properly pose an armature with Zspheres for proper deformations for a setup artist and rigger.

Although these items are not going to be rigged in any way we are graded on the ability to do so. Meaning to have the body posed in a way (A-Pose) to properly hold the stretching information at a halfway point.

We worked with the torso, to the arms, the legs, then the hand, and then the face. While in the second week we had to create the best full body sculpt we could with what understanding we had of the anatomy. Let's just say I've improved a great deal after that. Even in two weeks a better understanding of anatomy and structure was prompted in this class. 

I credit alot of the growth and development in those last two weeks to Rafael Grassetti (Lead Character Artist at Sony). Our instructor had shown off some of his incredible sculpting work. Which can be found here if you're interested.

Artstation

Personal Website

Gumroad

His tutorial videos are incredible and were invaluable for this class and my overall development in Zbrush this month. His rendering techniques and explanation of muscle structure and the reasoning behind it is perfect. Although I came into this class uninterested in character art and modeling I came out of it with surprising final results. 

Final Head Sculpt - Matcap

Final Body Sculpt - Rendered

I look forward to updating you guys about the Texture Painting class. It was the most fun I've in some time. I even happen to crank a solid portfolio piece. Hopefully you'll see that in my final demo reel within the next 6 - 8 months.

Best,

Jacob