Alessia Isacchi - 2023

The Clockmaker's Workshop

The first project I'd like to show you is titled "The Clockmaker's Workshop" and It's the first project I made here at Skyup Academy for the photorealism class where I got assigned a picture that I had to recreate fully in 3d. 

 I got a photo of a diorama made by Tony found on a blog called Miniature Treasures.

The challenge was to recreate all the visible assets while trying to get as close as possible to the reference given. I mainly used Maya for the modeling part, since it was mostly hard surface stuff, except the little soldier statue for which I used Zbrush. 

I was pretty lucky to find more pictures of all the parts and small tools of the diorama on the same blog. I then proceeded to create a board with all the references that could help me during the whole process, starting from the modeling but that could be useful for the texturing as well.

While in Maya, the first step was setting the camera from the right angle and blocking out the main scene. In the following screenshots you can see the various steps, starting from basic shapes and then proceeding to go more and more into detail.

After the modeling was done I started the texturing phase. Learning how to use Substance Painter was much fun since I started seeing the scene come to life and getting closer and closer to the reference.

I then got back to Maya to set the scene for the final render. I studied the lights on the original photo and focused on how they created shadows and reflected on the materials. We used Vray as the rendering engine, which helped me get to the final result which I'm pretty pleased about.

The original diorama and main reference:

Zoidberg

The second project I made at Skyup Academy is a chimera sculpted entirely in Zbrush. I named it Zoidber after the Futurama character since it vaguely reminded me of him.  

We started by sketching some concepts we liked on paper, mixing parts from various animals, and when we had chosen the one we liked best, we started sculpting it with the monsterclay.

The creature I picked has the skull of a walrus as a face, the shell of a turtle and the tail of a shrimp, making him a chimera that is able to swim and slither on the ground as well. 

I got inspired by the type of creatures you find in a Tim Burton movie, in fact I tried to emulate his style in the lighting as well. 

Other than being real fun to make, the maquette ended up being essential while sculpting in Zbrush, having something physical that I could refer to in the blocking phase. Starting from the main volumes I added more and more details as I moved on.  

The board with all the references used:

That is all! Thank you for your time, I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did making them.