A portfolio of characters, tools and gameplay by Alexander Mhiko McIvor

                         Resonance

I present to you "Resonance". My latest model based on the amazing concept by Fred Augis. I started working on her in April whilst recording my process and workflow specifically for the Rookies. I am self taught and my aim is to use this competition to get feedback and ideas to sharpen my skills and to hopefully connect with more experienced artists. 

The challenge of recording myself has been quite the experience.  I can appreciate those brave enough to try livestreaming and YouTube a lot more especially now that I know how the camera forces you to make less mistakes and be a lot more deliberate with your approach. Its all part of the learning process and I hope this first model and all the models to follow do their best in showing how much I am trying to learn and grow as an artist.

and in regards to Resonance, I plan to add some vfx and animation to truly capture the stage presence and energy  of her concept once I've done a bit more research into Unreal Engine 5. I hope you enjoy scrolling through my work

Hyeonsick Choi's Warrior Princess

The second model I present to you  is "Hyeonsick Choi's Warrior Princess" based on the beautiful concept by Aruana Sick. She was a challenge and I am so happy with how she came out, especially her hair cards which is a process that I'm still getting the hang of.

She was sculpted and posed in Zbrush and textured in substance painter, everything else was done in Blender. I learned a lot from trying to retopologize all the pieces of her armor and her unique jacket whilst trying to adapt and honor the original concept.

             Arakion Monk Fan Art

My third Entry is a 3d Fan art of the Arakion Monk from the Arakion crawler game on Steam. I came across the design on pinterest and felt that he would be the perfect adversary to my Blade and Soul monster fan art. I have this narrative in my head of the Arakion monk being the  brutal but righteous warrior trying to defeat and subdue the monstrous and unruly character you will find on my fifth character entry. 

The skin texture is repurposed from a 3D scan that I purchased to try understand skin texturing by going through each of the textures to try emulate in my future work. The character itself was blocked in Zbrush before I refined and retopologized the pieces in Blender. From there I sculpted and posed the details and the face blendshapes in Zbrush and textured the character in Substance Painter. 

         Shumolly's Moth Queen

For my 4th entry, I present to you Shumolly's Moth Queen my attempt to capture the incredible design by Shumolly.  Her body language just screams a scary but regal and enchanting creature that I just had to attempt and make a part of my portfolio. It was a fun but challenging project and the first model that I had ever tried to pose in Zbrush. 

She was a learning experience for me, from her pose, the scene lighting, trying to model the intricate pieces of her jewelry and texturing her skin which is an area that I would love to retry once I have more experience.

She was blocked in and sculpted in Zbrush and her hair and retopology was done in Blender. Texturing was done in substance painter and her rendering was done in Blender, another first for me at the time.  

                EZ Controls

EZ Controls is an addon I made for blender to help me with rigging. My objective with the addon was to make a flexible rigging assistant to help automate some of the repetitive and mundane aspects to rigging that I came across whilst rigging my models in blender and it was also my solution to adding both IK-FK snapping to any of my custom rigs  which was a necessity for my fifth entry.

An Hee-chul's Blade & Soul Monster

My fifth entry and the enemy of my Arakion Monk, at least in my imagination is An Hee-chul's Blade & Soul Monster based on the concept art of HICHI/An Hee-chul.

This was one of my earliest models and I've used it the most in my journey to learn and practice various facets of game development at an entry level. This is also the model that inspired me to script a rigging addon for Blender for IK-FK snapping.

 I sculpted the model in Zbrush doing my best to interpret the design of his armor and weapons using a single image. The model was retopologized in Blender and the hair cards were made by converting particle hairs into curves that I could use to make haircards from. The more stylized/anime looking hairs of the design are manually placed planes that were extruded to capture the design as closely as possible at my level at the time.

Texturing was done in Substance Painter, where I used Magdalena Dadela's YouTube videos for my first attempt at texturing human skin.

Having finished my first human(ish) model, I wanted to challenge myself to rigging and animating it for an Instagram post for my birthday. It wasn't too difficult a task with my addon and various resources on rigging in Blender available online, however, when I had more than enough time to spare before my birthday with a fully rigged model I couldn't help but think of challenging myself even more. This led me to animating 2 combo attacks, a walk, dodge and run cycle in 8 different directions with root motion and a jumping animation. 

With the textures, animation and a rigged model in hand, I brought everything into Unreal Engine 4 and scripted the model as a playable character which you can see in the youtube link below. But I still had another two days to go which is why the fifth entry I present to you is a textured, model sculpted from scratch, rigged and animated by yours truly and scripted as a playable character in Unreal Engine.... with vfx added to his attacks

I hope you like it

            TB Choi's Laelaps Beast

My last entry is my current first attempt at something more cinematic. It is based on a design made by TB Choi for a class he is teaching at Laelaps and my hope is to animate it in a short scene once I've learned more about cinematic lighting and camera framing. 

                        Thank you!

Thank you for taking the time to scroll through my entry and thank you for your consideration.

For those who are interested in seeing more of my work or want to connect, please free to follow me on Artstation, Instagram or Linkedin. If you see any way that I can improve or know of any opportunities I may be interested in, please do not hesitate to message me on [email protected]. Thank you