Adrian Alonso 2023-2024 - Character Artist

Introduction

Hello everyone! I'm Adrian Alonso, a passionate 3D character artist. 

My journey began at a local video game development school in Spain, merging two of my greatest passions: video games and art. While the course provided a broad overview, it made one thing clear: 3D modeling was my calling. To hone my skills, I pursued the Master's Degree in 3D Character Modeling and Lighting at Animum Creativity Advanced School from 2021 to 2023. 

Currently, I'm focused on refining my portfolio as I eagerly seek my first job within the industry.

Cowboy Cactus - Cartoon Sculpt

My second character model at Animum School. The task we had was to create a cartoon-style character for the first time, aiming to learn the workflow and sculpting techniques required for developing this type of characters.

Since I saw Robert Brown's cactus artwork, I knew it had to be my first cartoon character. I added more facial structure like eyes, mouth, and overall shapes to create animation keyshapes needed for the assigment. I started by modeling it in Maya to maintain clean and simple forms, and then refined it in ZBrush to add detail.

Special thanks to my three mentors Jose Manuel García, Juan Puerta and Miguel Ángel Carriquí.

Basic textureless clay renders, without and with normal map and roughness. Renders done in Maya while working the LookDev of the project. 

Albedo, Roughness and Wireframe view of the renders. 

As you can see, considerable attention was devoted to the albedo map to maintain interest in the basic texture work through vibrant colors and gradients. Subsurface scattering (SSS) was employed for the cactus 'skin' and spikes to give it a more lifelike appearance.

As evident by the wireframe, polycount was not a constraint in this assignment (no limit was imposed). Therefore, although the model has less than 60K tris, it is subdivided for the final renders to refine and smooth the shapes. Extra geometry was added to the face and joints so it could actually be animated.

ZBrush high-poly clay render. The low-poly model was initially crafted in Maya to maintain simple shapes, with additional details and more intricate features sculpted in ZBrush. Despite the absence of certain facial elements in the original concept, such as eyes, mouth, and facial muscles, they were incorporated as per the assignment's requirement for facial key shapes.

Several details, such as the facial structure and the folds of the poncho, were adjusted or completely changed for the final model.

Substance Painter screenshot. I aimed for a stylized realistic appearance, although not entirely lifelike. Additionally, I designed a small desert-themed base for the character.

Maya LookDev view. A standard three-point lighting setup was employed, as usual. Additionally, supplementary small lights were strategically placed to accentuate specific areas such as the gun and hat, as well as to enhance metallic reflections.

KHANIVORE - Creature Sculpt

My take on sculpting and texturing Khanivore by Darren Bartley for Love, Death + Robots (Sonnie's Edge). It was creater for my first big assigment at Animum School as a creature sculpt.

Khanivore is the first creature/character that I fully modeled, and the entire process was very enjoyable and instructive. It was entirely modeled in ZBrush, focusing extensively on the organic shapes of the creature, textured in Substance and rendered in Arnold.

Special thanks to Animum 3D and my tutors: Guillermo Alfredo Comoli, Juan Puerta and Daniel Florín Matei.

ZBrush Highpoly View

Several renders and screenshots directly captured from the ZBrush high-poly model. This marked my first attempt at sculpting a character, refining both the anatomy and details required considerable time to achieve a satisfactory result.

Clay render, albedo, roughness and normal map.

WIREFRAME

The low-poly retopology was done before adding high-frequency details in ZBrush. It consists of approximately 38k faces/74k tris, primarily due to numerous small pieces. Polycount was not the primary concern for this project, and a subdivided version was utilized for renders along with a displacement map.

WIP Stages

Sadly, I don't possess the ZBrush files to showcase the actual sculpting process of this piece, nor do I have the PureRef with all my references. This is due to my past self's reckless habit of deleting anything that wasn't the final version.

I hope the following screenshots can provide a small glimpse into the process and behind-the-scenes work on this project.

Substance Painter screenshoots. 

LookDev and lighting, experimenting with various lighting setups and exploring different creative approaches.

Concept Art

Concept art by Darren Bartley and 3D Sculpt by Ben Erdt and Adel Benabdallah. I aimed to seamlessly blend elements from both the concept art and the final 3D sculpt into my model. Used screenshoots from the show (Love, Death + Robots - Sonnie's Edge) for texturing, I specifically drew inspiration from the dramatic red-light scenes for the more dramatic renders.

SIG Sauer P320 M17 - Gun Prop

My latest personal project has been to create this model of a SIG Sauer M17 as a future prop for a character I am working on. Upon realizing that the character carried a weapon, I saw it as an opportunity to enhance my firearm modeling skills. To achieve this, I closely followed the tutorial and workflow by Eugene Petrov. 

This workflow starts with creating a high-poly version of the weapon in Zbrush using booleans, dynamesh and polish the mesh, then transitioning to Maya to create the low-poly version (13K tris) and UVs using the boolean meshes. After baking in Marmoset and Substance, I textured it in Substance Painter (Specular/Gloss - 4K map) and rendered it in Marmoset. The black camouflage of the pistol was created using the artwork "CGMA: Character Design for Film and Games Course" of David Paget as a reference.

First person shooter renders. (Hand mesh and textures by Eugene Petrov as part of his Handgun for Video games Tutorial in Artstation)

Alternate Jungle-style camo for texture practice and Alternate Black-style camo with holographic blue skull. Used one of David Paget arts as reference. I created this gun and camo as a prop for a future character project.

Wireframe render in Marmoset.

Creating the SIG Sauer M17

Reference Gathering: The initial crucial step in any project involves collecting ample references to gain a comprehensive understanding of the gun's shape and surface details from all angles. Auction websites often provide numerous photos of the same gun for reference. Additionally, I study the works of other artists to observe how they approached various shapes and tackled challenging sections.

This was my first experience with hardsurface modeling in ZBrush, and I found using booleans to be both straightforward and enjoyable. In this workflow, I initially blocked out the basic shape of each component of the gun, relying on official measurements. Then, I utilized simple shapes such as boxes and cylinders, or occasionally more intricate forms, to carve out the desired shape from the original basic form. ZBrush has proven to be an incredibly useful and powerful tool for high-poly hardsurface work.

Once the final shape is achieved, you can decimate the mesh and polish it. During the polishing process, hard edges are slightly beveled to create a more visually appealing surface.

Retopology turned out to be easier than anticipated, as I could utilize the base shape and boolean meshes from ZBrush in Maya to create a low-poly version of the gun. It mainly involved fixing errors and cleaning up the topology.

Marmoset's Baker turned out to be more user-friendly and offered a wider range of options compared to Substance's Baker. Fixing small errors is also quite easy, as Marmoset responds very well to changes made in the original mesh.

Texturing was done in Substance Painter using Specular Gloss and without utilizing smart materials. The priority was to achieve a detailed surface, an aged weapon with a story, and above all, to add plenty of variation to ensure no surface appeared flat.

References for the black gun camo, by David Paget.

Venom Sculpt

In this project I've sculpted one of my favorite Marvel characters. The primary focus of this project was on several key aspects: Improving anatomy sculpting (with a dynamic pose for the first time), crafting a detailed base, constructing a miniature-like scene, and creating resin textures to enhance the overall aesthetic.

Above, you can see an overview and some details of this project. The first step was to create a small scene with a cutting mat and some props that you might find on the table of someone assembling a miniature or resin sculpture. Then, I sculpted the Venom figure, focusing on creating an interesting pose and designing a suitable base. The final step was to create a resin-like texture in Substance Painter, adding small surface details and reflections characteristic of that type of material.

I also created a colored version of the sculpt, even though achieving the resin texture was my main goal in this project.

Venom Creating Process

Here, you can observe various stages of the project spanning across weeks, including blocking out and posing the character, developing the base, refining the muscles, and shaping the details.

Screenshots of the albedo and roughness maps in Substance Painter, as well as the appearance of some of the small props within the scene.

Some of the light render test using different hdri and the light setup fot the final renders.

Thank you for taking the time to read and view this!

If you enjoyed all these works, please take a look at my ArtStation and message me if you want some more information on anything. A big thanks to everyone aforementioned, the amazing concept artists and the profesional tutors and mentors form Animum Creativity Advanced School. Also thank you to everyone who supported and advised me throughout this last 2 years.