Sam Spicher - 2022 & 2023 Characters
I am an aspiring character artist for games finishing up my time at Gnomon - School of Visual Effects, Games, and Animation. These are some characters and creatures I've made over the past year!
Turtle Warrior
This Turtle Warrior is based on a 2D concept by artist Roman Lychkov. This character was my first character created as a student at Gnomon and first finished character in general!
In its current state this character is a high-poly sculpt which I created in Zbrush. I am responsible for all 3D aspects of this character including sculpting and texturing. Texturing was done with a combination of Zbrush poly-paint as well as some work in Substance Painter. The final render was done with Redshift for Maya.
Concept by Roman Lychov:
Other Renders:
Character pre-pose and texture:
I posed this character in Zbrush by masking and transforming sections of the body in the Transpose Master tool. I applied base colors as well as softer gradient colors using poly-paint. I find poly-paint great for getting soft transitions between colors before moving into Substance Painter.
Raven Sorceress
This character is based on a 2D concept by artist 魏琦 on ArtStation. She is the first character I've brought through the game pipeline and I had a ton of fun doing so!
I am responsible for all 3D aspects of this character. The Raven Sorceress was brought through a game-ready pipeline. I started by sculpting her in Zbrush. In this phase I also blocked in color using poly-paint as a start for when I would later texture in Substance Painter. She was retopoed using a combination of Zremesher in Zbrush and Quad Draw in Maya. Marmoset Toolbag was used to bake the high-poly sculpt onto the low-poly mesh and the baked maps were brought into Substance Painter, where I would complete the texturing process. The final renders for this character were done in Marmoset Toolbag.
Concept by 魏琦:
Other Renders:
High-poly sculpt:
Minor proportional differences are present between the high and low poly models. I saw fit that her feathers be larger and legs slightly longer once the process was complete, so these changes were made to the low-poly model. This was done after the baking and texturing process to ensure baking would go smoothly.
Breakdown Views:
Candle Man
This creature was quite a change of pace for me, but yet again, it was so much fun to work on. The candle man is an original concept, sculpted as well as poly-painted in Zbrush. The eyes and other texture detail were done in Substance Painter. The final render was done in Marmoset Toolbag.
Inspiration:
After being given the prompt "Tortured Souls" by my Creature Sculpting teacher Jared Krichevsky, I searched the internet for reference and inspiration in order to come up with a horror themed character. My biggest inspiration for this creature ended up being the melting scene from Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark.
Other Renders:
Sculpt and Poly-paint:
Mountaineer and His Messenger Owl
These characters are based on a 2D concept by artist Antoine LOÏER on ArtStation. Both have been created to be game-ready.
I am responsible for all 3D aspects of these characters. They went through the same game-ready pipeline as the Raven Sorceress, although, final renders for these were done in Unreal Engine 5 rather than Marmoset Toolbag. So, I did material setup in Unreal Engine as well.
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