Sasha Honcharova | 2023

Portrait

I treated this project as an opportunity to allow myself to get lost in creating a realistic portrait of an imaginary person I could bring into a virtual existence. The biggest challenge that came with that was of course making sure that he looked believable.

I went through dozens of iterations of facial features and textures before he finally started coming to life. Surely, the key was getting the eyes right as everything lay in its place once his gaze stopped looking hollow and lifeless. To accentuate that, the lighting has become my biggest help. I referenced a lot of Annie Leibovitz’s photography and found a lot of guidance and inspiration in Pietro Berto’s fantastic piece “Emmanuel”.

I used ZBrush for the sculpt, Mari for the texturing of the skin, Substance Painter for the eyes and the accessories, Yeti for grooming, Maya for assembly and modeling of the accessories, VRay for rendering, and Nuke for the final composite. Displacement was hand painted using TexturingXYZ maps.

My sculpt out of ZBrush.

My final Mari node graph. 

Screengrabs from Maya displaying the topology and groom sections.

The inspiration for the jewelry came from the Kenyan Samburu tribe.

I’m really grateful for the incredible guidance from Tran Ma whose critique and mentorship has been a cornerstone to the development of this character and my growth as an artist. Another huge thank you to Jackson Lukas for all of his generous advice on the groom of the character.

This was my first time sculpting, texturing and grooming a production-ready character, which means that many challenges have been faced along the way! Hopefully next time this will be a much more streamlined process. And for now, although there are dozens of aspects of this character that I'd like to tweak, I am happy to lay this project to rest!

Octopus Mecha

This project was incredibly rewarding. The moment I saw Stefano Bertelli's work "Octopus-Mecha", I fell in love with the intricacies of this mechanical creature. It was definitely an intimidating concept to approach, however the amount of experience I got through experimentation and trial-and-error was indispensable! Plus I ended up having a ton of fun modeling it! 

The presentation was where I was able to provide my own creative input and storytelling. I imagined this machine as something archaic, hidden in a cauldron deep in its sleep, awaiting its awakening.

Sathish Kumar's work has been a big inspiration for the composition and atmosphere of this project.

A big thank you to Max Dayan for his mentorship! Once again, thank you to Stefano Bertelli for the amazing concept art. Lastly, I wouldn't be able to get to this point without the advice and help of my wonderful friends and instructors.

All assets except for the plant megascans were modeled and textured by me.