Lightning, Claws, Wings and Ice
The reader walked up to the coffin at the end of the mausoleum of learning and persistence. Bending over to read the plaque it read "Here lies the body of work created at Gnomon by Cullen Swenson." They proceeded to open the coffin and gaze upon...
This project was very near and dear to my heart, the first time I tried to make it I was simply not experienced enough and was going through a loss in my family, so it was scrapped for a while. At the end of my time at Gnomon I needed to give it another shot, starting fresh this time using everything I had learned. With new Zbrush Hard Surface techniques shown to me by Paul Gaboury I knew I could accomplish this task. I set to work sculpting in Zbrush, retopologizing in Maya, and texturing this robot using Substance Painter. Focusing on hard surface topology techniques that could be rendered in a game engine or in Vray for Maya, my goal was to hit a look that could be used for game cinematics.
BRANDI.A - Original 2D Concept by Wu Shenyou
This character was my first official go at creating a stylized character, trying to hit a style that lives between Overwatch and Fortnite where the hair is geo but using a PBR based workflow with Substance Painter for the textures. I absolutely loved the idea of this smaller frame woman with massive battle arms and still wanted to keep working on hard surface ideas even with a new stylized workflow I was learning from Stephen Anderson. If I were to push this into more of a game mesh it would be through simplifying the geometry on the hands even further but for this project I wanted the modeled in bolts and screws at that smaller level of detail.
Azazel - Original Character Illustration by Peter Mohrbacher
I call myself a character artist but the truth is I absolutely love weapons and armor, each project I chose has some sort of metal element that usually became my favorite part. For Azazel the sword, sheathe, pauldrons and boots were something I absolutely loved modeling and texturing. Damon Woods gave us a solid crash course in hair cards that I used for the first time in this project, I extended that knowledge into the feather cards with the advice of Miguel Ortega and I was able to refine the wings. I really used this guy as a battleground to push myself as hard as I could while figuring out my preferred methods of texturing, masking, and finally rendering as a real time model in Marmoset Toolbag.
While I love characters, props and modeling, the rest of my artistic passion lies in sculpting and creating new ideas. A cathedral buried for hundreds of years far in the north, a grand door frozen shut and a demon door knocker keeping the seal on what lies beyond. As the ice has started to melt a cave leads us into this chaotic scene lost to time. With the help of Jon Arellano we made this scene a reality as my first foray into the world of Unreal Engine 5 to discover the power of this beautiful software. I used some megascan assets for the small pebbles and some of the snow textures. The ice shaders were created by myself using Zbrush and Substance Painter, the rest of the 3D assets were created by myself as well.
Thank you for making it to the end of my submission, I hope you have a fantastic day!
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