Mr. Otter Roger project

Hi! This is my very first 3D project during the CG Masterclass at SkyUp Academy. The concept assigned to me was a beautiful Mr. Otter art of Xingxiaoming. 

I enjoyed the process of sculpting his concept but I had some struggles in the making, such as sculpting the web of the lantern and making the lighting of the final scene work with the model. 

I started with sculpting the model in Zbrush, created the scene in Maya and rendered it with Vray. I learned so much in such a short time!

The very first step was to look up as many references as possible to be able to create shapes and textures in a credible way. These were mine!

Then I blocked out the model and slowly proceeded to sculpt the right proportions and shapes. Only after that, I added textures and details.

I had a lot of trouble making the web of the lamp, to the point that I thought I couldn't do that. But thanks to the help of the teachers in class, I discovered the best way to do that: all by hand. It's composed of tiny rectangles duplicated a lot of times and attached carefully to the lamp's mesh. 

I also have to admit that I had a hard time posing at the start, but the more I tried the easier it was! 

The lighting was also pretty difficult for me. None of the references I had matched my model, because some elements were creating some involuntary shadows. I made it work thanks to a Zhelong Xu reference, switching the colors from red to blue. I also tried this bright material to try to recreate a turquoise porcelain-like feeling but it was not working, so I decided to stick to the basic clay mat material, which gave my otter a sense of softness that matches the concept.  It's not an easy material to work with tho,  since it's easy to fall in flat shadows in a model this smooth.

I liked the entire process so much!