Seacreature

As part of my portfolio I really wanted to model and texture a creature. During my research I stumbled across the great artwork of Brian Valeza (https://www.artstation.com/tots) and his Drawgonicon series. I immediately fell in love with the artwork and wanted to realise it in 3D.

Since I only had a still image as a concept, I had to look for other references on the theme of reptiles, dragons, fish, and snakes. The concept itself leaves a ot room for interpretation and so I was able to contribute my own thoughts and ideas. I had to find my own references for this too. 

I started with a Zsphere blockout in Zbrush. I gradually revised the shape until I had the desired shape. Then I started sculpting different variations of the scales and applying them to the dragon's back as my own IMM brush. Before I place these I work on the retopology and the UVs. I placed the scales on the wings and head of the creature by hand. Now I was finally able to work on the details and I worked on many different layers to gradually sculpt the details into the model. I thought about which camera shots I wanted to render beforehand and so I knew which areas I had to prioritize in terms of details.

When I was finished sculpting I exported the displacement map, as well as the lowpoly and highpoly versions. Since I had a lot of overlapping shapes, but I wanted to use mostly one material for the creature, I made the cage for baking the texture maps myself in Maya. I then use Marmoset and Substance for baking. I did the texturing in Mari and the shading and rendering in Arnold Maya. At first I wanted to use a black background, but then decided to create a background as Mattepainting in Nuke.

The project was a challenge due to its size. I had never made a reptilian creature before and the amount of scale and sculpting was a challenge. Nevertheless, I was able to significantly expand both my Zbrush skills and my Maya skills. I was also able to expand my nuke knowledge. So I created the baking cage manually for the first time as well as my own IMM brush in Zbrush. The time management and planning were also challenging and I was able to gain better insight into time estimation and my own pace. It was the first time that I was allowed to work on a project over several months and so I had to combine a lot with real life. 

Check out my Artstation for more: https://www.artstation.com/diinee