Enter Frieza!

Hello there! I'm Flesh aka Simone Bevacqua.

Today the contest ends and I am happy to post the final update and show you my final renders.

Compared to my last update, I decided to revise the design of Frieza's helmet, which was too far from the original.

I also tried to put more emphasis on the color, which was lackluster in the last update. It was really difficult, because I tried to maintain an anaime/manga tone but without giving up the ability to vary the materials. So I opted to add ink strokes , to pay homage to and remember the work of Akira Toriyama.

I went ahead with the idea of showing a damaged Frieza because of the clash with his enemies. So in addition to ruining armor, I also rendered the core that it has in the head as if it were a kind of glassy material that had suffered a fracture.

The base on which it rests represents the ground of Namek , the planet where he clashes in the epic duel with Goku. On the planet Namek the grass is blue/blue, this is because Master Toryama had decided to reverse the color palette of earth and sky.

Like the Z warriors from dragon ball, I tried to push my limits for this my first contest as a CGI student. At the moment, I think I am still at Crillin's level, but I know that with practice and with training experiences like this contest, I can aspire to increase my Ki and get to face the all-powerful FRIEZA myself!

if you want to know more about the creation process go ahead and scroll through the past few updates, I would be very pleased!

Good luck to all Z warriors participating in the contest, see you soon on The Rookies with new projects.

So here we come to the part I was most looking forward to: paint and texture

I initially wanted to make freezer more realistic, to take advantage of the potential of substance materials.I thought that the red parts of freezer's body, could also be muscle fibers, so I did some research and derived an alpha that was as close as possible.

And then I thought of his armor as something more organic,more like his helmet, like made of bones.And the result was this:

But I was not happy. The fact that the body parts were more realistic was not enough, freezer was deviating too much from the original manga essence, made up of so much ink.

At which point I was reminded of the style of the great artist Alberto Mielgo, creator among many things he did of the famous "Jibaro" and " The Witness" episodes of the "Love, Death & Robots" series. He has a unique style, able to mix reality with painting, materials with ink and paint.

To get even more sources for similar styles, I watched the latest Ninja Turtles movie "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem" which I absolutely recommend, hilarious and with a perfect style to be inspired by.

I tried to do my best drawing from these styles and trying to give my own interpretation and this is the result so far with even more accentuation of some strokes reminiscent of manga ink and this is the result so far.

I thought of freezer as having just fought, so with damaged armor and dirty.

OK  maybe not so much damaged but scratched, then again it is hard to get the Galactic Emperor in trouble!

To get closer to the style I was looking for, in addition to using the watercolor style brush I also used among other things ambient occlusion and fill layers to which I added shadow and light effects to look for more contrasts. To these layers I then added blurs to homogenize better and then again paint layers to be able to have more control and decide where to add and where to take away in a less procedural way.

Where were we?

I did the blocking of the face and armor, both created on Zbrush.

Initially I tried exporting and applying the face as an alpha but without good results, so I decided to export as a "depth channel" from zbrush's bpr pass, after which to give more depth on substance I applied a "height to normal" filter to the layer.

The torso part of the armor I sculpted and exported it as alpha

On the armbands, leggings and shoulder straps I am still working on them, but for these elements Pablo Munoz Gomez's video tutorial on the use of "Path" was essential.

I chose to represent Frieza 1st form, both because he is my favorite villain in the" Dragon ball Z" series and because I think his design can go well with the features of the MEET MAT.

The first step I share is the sketch that made in 2d.

Like the Z warriors, I want to push my limits and make Frieza's body parts  more realistic and less cartoony, trying to exploit the potential of Substance.