Girl In The Wasteland

In my second year of studying in Nanyang Polytechnic, I was introduced to Zbrush and character sculpting. My assignment required me to find a 2D concept art that interests me and create a Zbrush model. I really loved Jia Cai's concept art (https://www.artstation.com/artwork/nRnl4) which was a character in a post- apocalyptic setting. I wanted to challenge myself to create an appealing stylized sculpt, with hand paint textures, understand 3 point lighting and lastly to familiarize myself with Zbrush.  

During this learning journey, I am truly grateful for my lecturers and peers for giving me tons of critique and feedback. I was able to discover my potential in modelling and gave myself more confidence in my own works! ( • ̀ω•́ )✧

Firstly, I blocked out my model and adjusted her anatomy slowly as I continued. I referred to George Zaky's (https://www.artstation.com/georgezaky108)  female anatomy models as a learning point on how to sculpt muscles and learn muscle groups. During this process, I made a few mistakes such as not working from low to high subdivision levels which took my blocking stage longer than expected. 

Secondly, as I slowly was able to implement what I have learnt from my lectures into sculpting accessories. As I learnt Maya before working with Zbrush, I quite enjoyed using ZModeler to quickly block out my hard surface accessories such as the knee pad. 

Thirdly, I used Zbrush to UV and Polypaint to texture. However my assignment due date was reaching and unfortunately I was not able to model all of the accessories that the concept had. I was not very happy of the textures as I felt that she looked overall very dull. Though, I felt proud of my model overall. 

Now that I am in Year 3, I gave a goal to myself that I wanted to make improvements to my portfolio. I started on this model and listed a few mini goals I had for this project. One, study and discover more about Zbrush. Two, improve her textures and overall model. Three, implement a good 3 point lighting into my renders.

I love doing stylized work, especially texturing my models and assets. Unfortunately I was not given a lot of time to go through the whole 3D pipeline. Thus I worked with Zbrush Polypaint only. I went to do my own research and learnt to use layers. I wanted to make sure that her clothes and accessories had a pop of colour, using saturated colours and defined shadows where necessary.

Surprisingly, the most difficult challenge out of the whole process was lighting and rendering. I took some time to research on lightcap and Zbrush's light properties. Using the help from my lecturer whom made a youtube video about lighting, I was able to achieve a good 3 point lighting and learnt about rim lights. 

At the end, I felt more confident with my modelling skills and am more familiar with Zbrush. I truly loved the experience of self-directed learning as it made my journey meaningful. With that being said, I appreciate all the feedback I got from my peers and lecturers, I was able to learn and share knowledge! ( ◡̀_◡́)ᕤ