Diamond of the Season

With my love for art history, romantic novels, and unique book to screen adaptations, the Bridgerton series on Netflix has become on of my favorite shows in recent years. I wanted to create a character that merged my African American heritage with nods to the Regency Era in British that are laced in the show.

For reference, I chose lots of dark skinned models and unique Regency portraiture (among other art history styles) to build a full idea of what my character would be and embody.

For the face, I experimented with R3DS Wrap to play around with wrapping skin texture to get some realistic details and facial expressions using a free head model from 3D Scan Store.

I was able to get some great skin details and create some interesting facial expressions from this.

I was able to transfer and mix a few XYZ and 3D Scan Store skin maps to get the texture on the face and body. Eventually I decided to hand sculpt the facial expression myself which can be seen below.

For the dress, I used Marvelous Designer to model and simulate my dress. I used the simulations to test how the fabric moved in so that I knew how it should fall when I pose my character.

For the fabric, I focused on creating charmeuse silk as the base of the dress and an interesting lace pattern. I built all the lace and fabric in Substance Designer. The main colors I played with were orange, blue, and white. I settled with a light blue and white lace.

For skin texturing, I used a mix of scans and hand painted textures. I used an XYZ texture to project some pores since I lost some detail in decimation. I also added few additional pore maps and scattered them across the body to give the arms some texture. Most of the detail and painting I did was on the face. 

For posing, I referenced everything from live models to Greek sculpture. I found that out of all of experimenting these 5 poses told interesting stories. I then quickly simulated my dress to each one to see if I felt connected to one in particular.

For my theme of Bridgerton and a nod to my African American heritage, I decided to go with this pose. It felt the most classic and also would allow my hair to shine and build out the shape. It also displayed every area of the dress in a way I liked. 

The hair was probably one of the scariest and most difficult parts of my project. I wanted to do a kinky natural hairstyle for this character from the beginning.

I experimented with lots of different styles and attempted to incorporate Regency Era hairstyles with a straight and kinky hair textures.

Eventually after gathering more reference and exploring I found this hair style (inspired by the wedding wig of Queen Charlotte in Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story) I created my character's hair. In the front are 3 bantu knots (a hair style I grew up wearing a lot) and in the back a large curly afro (a popular natural hair style for many especially in the African American community).

Once the hair was done and a few props and jewelry were remodeled and added, it was time to move on to final lighting.

For the main lighting I wanted strong contrast similar to lots of the portrait of the Regency Era.

In addition to that, I also wanted to a brighter lighting setup just to showcase the dress and it's details.

For the light setup, I did a very basic 3 point light setup with a backdrop.

Below are the final renders. 

This showcases a closeup of the face with all the final textures, jewelry, and lighting setups.