S.kelly - "Human" & Creature/Character Portfolio

"Human" - Creature/Character Design, Sculpt, Texture & Render

I took a step away from the industry and focused more on the art of my work, creating a full creature/character based heavily on the surrealist work of Zdzisław Beksiński. This piece looked at the theme of "Humans" in character design through a surrealist lens. 

Concept & Design

The project started by exploring Surreal Human Form very loosely before picking out the key aspects I found interesting in my sketches and desgining 3 humanoids based on them. I them choose one and further developed the design based on a number of moodboards and artwork I had coalated as inspiration.

I wanted my designs to feel akin to my artistic inspirations (mainly Beksiński's) own work but still uniquely my own, choosing to add a "signiture" of golden rings to my design and themes of Vanity, Control and Oneness filled this need.

Digital Sculpt 

In Zbrush, I created my "Human". I focused heavily on referencing my concept art and other sources, mainly real-life examples of anatomy found in surreal examples of the human body (or as close of an approximation was possible). 

The tail was a challenge as the curve brushs in Zbrush weren't to my liking, I instead used them in conjuction with a set of spheres to wrap the curves around as well as a brush pack inspired by HR Giger and Beksinski linked below.

https://zbrushguides.store/en-gb/products/giger-beksinski-tribute-brushes-pack-for-zbrush

I created a set of golden rings based on my concept art and added detail to the tail and body based on references.

The brush pack and Zbrush's noise tools were used to add deeper detail tp the sculpt before being UV mapped in Zbrush and Maya.

Texturing

After roughing up potential colour pallets and an idea of what I wanted the skin to look like, I created a custom Skin smart material in Substance Painter using the creature skin pack linked below as a base and used the gold material linked below as a base for the metal ring texture.

https://www.artstation.com/marketplace/p/grDwm/10-creature-skin-smart-material-vol01

https://substance3d.adobe.com/community-assets/assets/dc1171826c2f500b09a4bf66e8504aa3b39e2cdd

Rendering

Finally I created a very basic scene in Maya that reflected the warm, mysterious and surreal atmosphere of Beksinski's work based on 4 paintings of his. The majority of the scene consisted of lighting and atmospheric fog to give the illusion of the brush-stroke gradients of his work.

CGI Creature/Character Personal Work Portfolio

In addition to "Human" I have worked on personal/fanart designs and pieces.

"Isaac" Character Sculpt (The Binding of Isaac)

This was test of my ability to sculpt a full character in Zbrush with little design to work with, choosing to model Isaac due to the initial simplicity of his design but letting the flow of the piece dictate the design choices.

"PocketCat" Head sculpt (Fear and Hunger)

This was a test of my Zbrush skills, creating the mask worn by the character Pocket-Cat in the Fear and Hunger game series.

"Omi" Character Design, Models & Rigs (Personal)

A personal character designed by myself, modelling and rigged int two different styles for use in a game demo I wish to develop. The two styles are are representative of a PlayStation1's 3D graphics capabilities and an early PC's 3D graphics capabilities.

"Sentinel" Hard-Surface Character Model (Rime)

This was mostly a test of texturing solely with Maya/Arnolds texturing tools and to try basic hard-surface modelling.

Additional Design Exercises 

I have also done a number of additional exercisces in surreal creature and character design.