The Gooseberus

Greetings everyone! I'm proud to introduce my first project created during the first module of digital sculpting in the CG Masterclass at Skyup Academy. The theme for this semester was European mythology.

So, drawing inspiration from deities/creatures related to this theme, we were tasked with reimagining the chosen character. I chose Cerberus and decided to merge it with the most aggressive creature found in nature: the goose.

And thus, Gooseberus was born.

Sculpted in Zbrush, lit and textured in Maya and rendered in Vray.

After gathering enough references to start, I sketched out some ideas on paper that would allow me to move on to the next phase.

As this was my first venture into sculpture, getting my hands "dirty" with Monster Clay was definitely helpful at this stage.

Beginning to sculpt the piece in real life gave me a sense of how the volumes would behave digitally.

Happy with the achieved result, it's time to digitize everything. This being my first experience with Zbrush, I initially lost some time getting to grips with the interface, but once I got the hang of it, I understood how much creative freedom the software could offer.

Once everything was finalized, I noticed an issue: my Gooseberus had too much of a horizontal development when I actually wanted a more vertical one. At this point, the quickest method I found was to cut away the necks and redo them from scratch (a similar thing had also happened to me during sculpting with monster clay).

At this point, it's time for the lights! Once I've set up a small photo set in Maya, I move on to rendering with Vray.

After some testing, I opted for a lighting setup reminiscent of the character Maleficent, with a green keylight and a contrasting purple one with a bit of teal as rimlight.

If you've made it this far, thank you for your kind attention, and I'll see you on the next project!