Sam Spicher - 2022 & 2023 Characters

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.

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.

Concept by Antoine LOÏER:

High-poly sculpts:

Breakdown Views: