The Juggler

FINAL UPDATE !

Alright, that's it for me for the Circus Challenge! I'll keep working on the bear piece in my free time. I actually had a lot of fun working on The Juggler in the last 24h! Was a lot of fun, can't wait for more themes/challenges like this!

So here are my final renders, my clay renders and a little backstory for our character. Hope you like it, should you do or not, feedback is always more than welcome!!

Best,

Stephane

A small backstory for Emp, our juggler:

Emp is an Enkor. Enkors are great climbers but are firstly world-renowned fishermen which explains why they usually live close to rivers. Their four arms make them very fast swimmers but also allow them to hook themselves up on big tree roots by the water, when the current is strong. They developped a fishing technique where they simply wait, holding roots, waiting for fish to follow the flow of the water. When a fish passes by, they use their two remaining arms to grab it.

How did Emp get to be a juggler and not a fisherman? Well, many years ago, when he was but a child, travellers came on his home planet. Although most of them didn't mean any harm, a few set out to steal and pillage all they could from the peaceful Enkors. One of them decided to take Emp as a souvenir of their trip. Sadly, he never saw his family again. Indeed, soon after, the traveler in need of money and in a hurry, sold Emp for a few intergalactic pesos. It was The Grand Fair that bought him, an intergalactic circus, that travels from one planet to another, entertaining the crowds, providing all sorts of substances, flesh and other services for whoever is willing to pay. Emp isn't treated poorly, he gets fed well and gets to enjoy his time off, but he's a slave nonetheless. And his owner doesn't let him forget it: should he miss one night juggling in the streets, he would pay a very steep price. The first and last time he disobeyed, his owner castrated him in front of the rest of the circus. Now he still exhibits a scar that comes straight out of his pants, reminding everyone what happens when orders aren't followed. So now he plays the freak, attracting people to come to the main parade, hoping, in fear, that one day someone might come to set him free.

Polypainting is fun, I never texture my work but I really want to start to do it more, especially with Substance !

Hesitated about how to pose, started a rig, but ended up using the Transpose Master. The first image is work in progress, and the second is the scene as it is now. As you can see, our friend is juggling already! Anyways, i'll be detailing now, working on details and textures and what not. I think I might have the time/determination to polypaint him and do something nice in KeyShot, let's see!

Reworking the shapes, smoothing and correcting! Also, having fun with MatCaps eh ;)

Progress so far (8PM, UK time) (above and below).

Alright, so he was way too bulky, so I just stretched him around. And also I thought his head was too big so I reduced it too for the sake of balance (above).

Checking out the silhouette of a sculpt is super important to get a grasp of the flow of the figure, nothing's final just yet but I'm making good progress: let's make the next 17h count! (above).

Concepting the Emp's facial features to get a feel of what he'll look like. Little spoiler...he's going to have four arms! Who doesn't love a juggler from a freak show with four arms?!

Given what I came up with for his face, I'd say he's some sort of amphibian alien (he kind of reminds me Fleet Admiral Gial Ackbar in Star Wars), so I'll have to keep the anatomy relevant, in addition to figuring out the four arms (especially the whole section pectorals-deltoids-scapula-traps).

Working other parts of the body: the arms, the stomach, the legs (below).

So, starting with the human skulls our new character juggles with! Starting from the mighty sphere, as per usual! (above)

OK. Had a bit of a situation yesterday evening with my hard drive, and ended up being set back a week with the "Meda, the dancing bear" project. I'll admit, it was pretty frustrating/enfuriating but sometimes that's how it is and you have to improvise something. I really wanted to enter the Circus Challenge so it was a bit demotivating thinking that I might not have anything to submit...

SO...I went to bed. The night always gives good advice and sleep is so important to think straight and work effectively.

And I dreamt a new piece, with a new character and developped a proper backstory in the morning. This gives me 24h to do the project, but eh, rock'n'roll: I'm extra motivated. I will finish a new piece by the end of the challenge!

So, in short, this new piece (I'll write a proper backstory no worries) is about an alien slave who has to juggle in a intergalactic circus in order to stay alive. It'll be realistic-looking, because I work better/faster doing non stylized things (more used to the shapes).

But rest assured, after it all, I'll still continue working on the "Meda, the dancing bear" project because I absolutely loved trying stylized sculpting for once!

Scaling the characters to real world units (above).

In order to pose the characters, I quickly rigged them in Maya in order to be able to play around with them and see how I wanted to pose them. You can see that at first my pose wasn't very dynamic/reactive at all so I updated it in order to make it more interesting and more lively.

Here's the process (below).

Yeah, I also had fun with the rigs and animated the bear flying in the distance haha (above).

Before posing, I thought I would create the base for the characters (above).

So initially, I had two ideas: the first one was to have a base like so, textured and what not; the second one was to actually create a small environment, as if the characters are performing in a street (I absolutely loved the environments from Pixar's Coco so I think it inspired me in that sense). Given that I started the Circus Challenge a bit late, I thought I would spend most of my time on the characters and just have a simple base, rather than trying to build loads of assets to create a realistic, yet cartoon, street. So, in short, idea number 1.

I played around with the base in KeyShot. I deformed it a bit and just made a really quick cobblestone texture (above).

I definitely envisioned the outer rim of the base to be metal from the very start. For the middle, the part the characters will stand on, I'm still deciding whether to have some sort of cracked dirt or cobblestones (deeper and more stylized than the ones in the quick render I made). They're both quite typical of old south european streets and just match my childhood souvenirs quite well, I just need to pick one. 

Also, a last quick point, I've been having fun rendering polypainted skin in KeyShot lately so I'll see whether I decide to texture in Substance or do a composite of ZBrush and KeyShot texturing. I love Substance but again, it all depends on the time I get to work on the piece (extra time spent unwrapping, baking maps, etc). No matter what I pick for this project, I definitely want to use Substance more often and on more projects, it's a great piece of software and it's French (like me) so I feel somewhat proud haha.

Creating a basemesh for the bear for posing (like I did earlier with the man). Some detailing and smoothing but nothing too crazy (above).

Also, I forgot to mention it before, I think, but the bear is called 'Meda', as it means 'teddy bear' in Serbian: it's easy to pronounce in most languages, it's simple, it's short, it's got a bear-related meaning and, let's face it, it suits well this sweet little bear face.

Still not entirely set on the man's name but it's coming, no worries.

Alright, so here I just blocked out the clothes of the character. Since I'm coming up with things as I go, I experimented a bit and decided to go with the skinnier pants as they fit the character better but also feel more Balkanic (above).

Ok so I actually forgot to say but I'm leaving the body hair (chest/armpits/forearms) to later because I want to see how much will be visible when posed. And I love to sculpt in pose.

Also, to see things better, I played with polypainting the various parts (you saw when I was working on the hair). His skin will be darker and I'll see if I keep the clothes these colors but I still have time to decide, I still have a bunch of things to do before I work on the texture !

Added the man's fingers eh (below).

Growth of a furry moustache (below).

Growing eyebrows, they look like chocolate with that polypaint haha (below).

So...I kinda placed the eyebrows wrong, I realized: they're supposed to sit on the bone (check out the red lines that compose the skull) but I originally had them higher (above).

Here is a little comparison of before and after (below).

And finally, growth of the hair. Just love how 5th Element-y the hair is when only one side is showing (above). Anyways, making stylized hair was actually quite fun, I can't wait to experiment with the Meda's fur !

Renders of the blocking out of the bear (above).

Blocking out the bear: from basic shapes to slowly narrowing down what I like, whilst trying to match it all to studies of bear anatomy (mainly based on écorchés from the Body Worlds Animals Exhibition) in order to get a believable, yet stylized, animal (below).

Modelled the bear's tambourine. All SubD. I assigned some materials quickly in order to better visualize how things will look in color (check out the breakdown below).

Two renders I did of the man (blocked out anatomy) in Arnold. Time to move on to the bear (I decided to work simultaneously on both characters so that I don't spend way longer on one, sacrificing the other) (above).

Blocking out the characters, starting with the man

Because I have seen "dancing bears" in the Balkans as a child (I'm part Serbian, part French) and "ursari" (understand, bear-leader) is a Romanian word, I want the stylized man to have Balkanic features so that it echoes to that side of my upbringing.

In addition to that, I want the bear and the man to have similar features: exagerated head sizes (man has a big head, bear has a small head), long bodies, small, black eyes, sharp features, strong cheekbones/eyebrows, etc. It has to look like they belong together. I want to hint at it, after all, they're friends, and don't we all look like our partners, our best friends, the people we spend the most time with?

Yup. He was going to have a beard. But then I realized it wasn't typical and I just wanted him to have a big beard because it made me laugh. So I went back and deleted it (above).

The hair is quite typical of the 19th Century, checkout Nikola Tesla's (1856 1943) hair style (below).

Working on the face in more detail and seperating the various components of the face. Temporary hair is in place. For this piece, I will sculpt the hair because I am not confident I will have time to groom the characters (especially because one of them is entirely covered in hair). Maybe this is something I will work on when the contest is over and I can just work on it in my own time, at my own pace. (above).

Final anatomy-blocking images (above).

So we've established that "training" bears to "dance" is bad. But how do we learn to live together again? How do we build a bond with bears so that we appreciate one another's presence? What if we started from scratch and the man isn't forcing the bear while the bear isn't taking its revenge on its captor? What if the bear's the musician and the man dances to its music? After all, we do dance to music of our own will and although rhythm is a concept proper to our species, some animals have a sense of it and understand the repetition of a musical pattern.

This is the idea I'm working from: I imagine a true friendship between man and bear. The bear is playing with a tambourine and the man is dancing, amuzing the bear, amuzing the crowds. There are no chains, no whips, no burning metal plates, no nose rings, no suffering. Trust is the only thing that keeps the show together. It's a different kind of performance, where all parties are having fun.

Here are some images that have inspired me when it comes to this project. Look at the clothes, the stances of the characters, their relationship, etc (above).

Ok! Super stoked about this project. But first, a little introduction, and please do read it: it's interesting and it grounds the project!

First things first...

Upon receiving an e-mail telling me the Rookies partnered with ZBrush and Substance for 'The Circus Challenge', I instantly wanted to join in.

Being quite busy, I only started working on something for this challenge since mid-April. I am not used to working with stylized shapes and I very rarely texture my work but I decided that I'd get out of my comfort zone entirely and do something completely different for once: it's been a lot of fun so far and I learnt a lot just playing with concepts and shapes I'm not used to manipulate. So yeah, expect a stylized sculpt, and hopefully painted, all my own concept and working on all aspects!

So, when I read, "circus-related piece, in a month", I got really excited about working to a deadline and got extremely motivated because I immediately envisioned what I wanted to do.

Where do I start...

A few months ago, my mother and I randomly talked about how people used to go around town, with a bear on a leash. They'd play some violin, flute or percussion and the bear would just stand up and dance to it. Sometimes the bear would pick up a beer and drink it too. As a small child, it was quite amusing, but looking back, I'm really glad those bears have been freed as this is really not the way bears are supposed to be treated.

When I read the brief for this challenge, I instantly wanted to work on that theme: people don't necessarily know about it but bear-leading is an age old tradition and bears have been mistreated throughout the ages. Ursaris and other bear-leaders have indeed been walking around with bears for centuries. For example, in the Middle Ages, the bears were mainly used for blood sports, whilst dancing-bears have been popularized in the 1850s.

The issue, you see, is that most bears were mistreated because "training" a bear to "dance" usually involved leading a cub onto scorching metal plates, where it will lift alternate feet to escape the pain. At the same time, a particular tune would be played, repeating this again and again until the bear is conditioned to lift its feet automatically any time the music is played, in fear of the pain that may come. In addition to that, bears were often fed very poorly and given alcohol a lot.

Nowadays, this sorry chapter has been brought to an end on the European continent, at least. "Dancing-bears" have been forbidden and the bears are enjoying quiet lives in dedicated sanctuaries, learning how to reconnect with their...bearhood, I guess. There are still more bears to free in the world but Four Paws, a company fighting for animal rights, keeps the fight up and won't give up until all animals are treated with respect, empathy and understanding.

The piece I'm working on for this challenge is not something that blames us for how we treated bears. It is a light-hearted portrait of what the lives of "dancing-bears" could be if they were all freed, on all continents.

So let us celebrate the world around us and live with it, instead of trying to shape it the way we envision it. There's time to make up for the errors of the past and educate ourselves!

I truly hope you like the project. I'll be posting screenshots and renders as I work on it, obviously. Please do not refrain on giving me feedback, it's always welcome!

Here's a little documentary on the work that has been done by Four Paws when it comes to "dancing-bears" (below).