Sohame Coicou | 3D Character Art Showcase | 2022-2023

Preface -

I am still discovering and exploring many things, a whole new world opened up to me when I decided to make the jump from 2D to pursue the path of 3D Character Art (thanks to an amazing teacher who made me fall in love with sculpting). For the time being, I remain as curious and eager to learn as possible. 
Still, I think I've come to understand how beneficial it can be to share our creations with the world, no matter how confident we are in our work. This contest is my opportunity to do so!

In the hope of bringing you even better things in the years to come, I wish you a pleasant time here! 

Boxing Girl

One week sculpting project based on an artwork by Xinyi Zou. 
It was our first time recreating a full picture in 3D, and the goal was to approach it as an illustration piece. Creating the high poly in Zbrush was the main focus, and then we were encouraged to do some compositing work in Photoshop.

I really enjoyed working on it, and it felt good to have the opportunity to create a finished piece for school! I had fun experimenting with rendering in my spare time.

Big thanks to our awesome mentor Antoine Destailleurs!

Experimentations with paintover, rendering and lighting.

Pendleton Twin

This assignment was done over a weekend or so. The original sculpt we had as a reference was from Ranjit Ghosh,  itself based on a concept by Cedric Peyravernay for Dishonored.

Once again, after sculpting the bust on Zbrush, I've tried to explore lighting on Marmoset Toolbag. I enjoyed playing around with it and discovered a lot, including the fact that I still have plenty to learn about this whole part of the process!

Fish Bowl

The Fish Bowl is a project based on a concept by Veerle Zandstra, that was completed in one week as part of a week-long course designed to teach us the process of creating game-ready props, under the supervision of Matthieu Laude.

We went through most of the process, starting with Blender to block the shapes, ZBrush to sculpt the high poly, back to Blender for the retopology and UVs, Marmoset Toolbag for the baking, and finally Substance Painter for the texturing. 
The latter being a mix of PBR and handpaint. 

It was my first experience with this hybrid approach, and it was nice to see what we could do in just a few days, learning most of the basics of the industry process, and resulting in a finished piece!

Anatomy Study 

"Pluton, dieu des Enfers tenant Cerbère enchaîné"

Here comes one of my favorite subjects, anatomy sculpting !
During these two last years at Artside, we had many courses focusing on anatomy. With the many feedbacks of our amazing teacher Cyril Roquelaine, we improved immensely in very little time.
One of the latest works was a study of a sculpture made by Augustin Pajou.

We had a day to sculpt it in ZBrush, and a weekend to improve it. I reworked it later with Cyril's advice. 
Giving that I love sculpting, I really enjoyed working on this piece, and I'm looking forward to doing more studies like this one to always improve my skills.

Clay sculptures

I wanted to show some of the work I've done in monster clay, under the supervision of Cyril Roquelaine, as it's been an integral part of my 3D training and has really helped me grow my skills over the past two years.
These classes and our teacher played a major role in the evolution of my career plans.

Durotan

At the end of the first year, I had the opportunity to choose one character to sculpt in clay.
I chose Durotan, as a tribute to the game that made me want to join the video game industry in the first place: World of Warcraft.

It was a big milestone, we had a bit less than two weeks to make an entire character from scratch. It was thrilling. I think it was my favorite project of the whole year, the sense of accomplishment was huge!

Voodoo Witch

One of the challenges of this year was to recreate a whole concept in clay, in 3 days. After a little while without practicing, it felt nice to use our hands to shape clay into a full character.
We had to choose from a list of concepts selected by Cyril, and I chose the Voodoo Witch designed by Xiaojie. 
I was very excited to get started, yet would have loved to have had another day to polish it up.

Reinhardt Balderich

Last but not least, the biggest challenge we faced in clay classes: this Reinhardt. 
The focus of this week was Sci-Fi, which means clean and smooth surfaces.
This time again, only 3 days of work; but this time, as a duo composed of one Character Artist, and one Environment Artist.

I teamed up with Natan Coquillard, and was in charge of the shaping of our sculpture. I put everything into place, blocked out every shape while he worked on the props, and then he polished every part of the armor after my first pass.

It was very rewarding, and we learned so much working in pairs!
Our visions as Character artists and Environment artists are quite different, like left and right brain one might say. It was great to have the help of someone who operated very logically, and Natan was also grateful to work with someone more intuitive.
It was our last class of clay; we are both very proud of this one.

Thanks to Cyril again for everything!

Thank you for taking the time to look through this showcase of one year's work!

And thanks to our teachers and mentors for everything we've learned and keep learning each day; and of course, my classmates for their feedbacks! :)