ZBRUSH | PHOTOSHOP
Practical tips and tutorials from pro artists to improve your CG skills
Learn how to craft visually appealing characters and gain valuable insights into creating clean, polished meshes with João Sousa
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Whether creating your own design or bringing someone else’s concept art to life, your role as a character artist is to capture not only the likeness, but also the figure’s essence and transfer all these details into a 3D model. Achieving an appealing look is one of the most challenging aspects when sculpting stylised characters, but the reward is immense when you reach a stage where the character feels both believable and alive.
In this tutorial, I’ll guide you through the process I followed to sculpt a different take on Raphael from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchise, which is based on concept art by the awesome Luigi Lucarelli. He showcased not only the character’s appearance with clothing, which is our primary focus, but also a version without the jacket and T-shirt that’s highly beneficial for us 3D artists, as it offers a clearer understanding of the character’s torso.
01 PLACE REFERENCES IN ZBRUSH
This first step is, by far, the most important of the entire process of translating a 2D design to a 3D sculpt successfully. Studying the concept art before diving into ZBrush gives you all the input you need to understand the character you’re sculpting.
First import the concept into Photoshop and try to deconstruct it. What I usually do is first break it down into primitive shapes. That way I can have a clear idea of the character’s proportions and how each element of the body relates to the others. Lower the opacity of the concept layer and create a new one to draw on top.
Take a closer look at where the angles of the silhouette change drastically or break, or look for the peak of those curves to know exactly where they start to change direction, as well as pointing out straight lines. This is also a good opportunity to measure the character and see how the height of the head relates to the rest of their form. With this information in mind, it’s time to have some fun in ZBrush.
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02 ANATOMY BLOCKOUT
One of the reasons to break down the concept into multiple primitive shapes is that it allows for easy translation of details into simple 3D objects like spheres.
AUTHOR
João Sousa João is a freelance character artist who has been working in the collectibles industry since 2020. He specialises as a digital sculptor for renowned brands such as Marvel, DC, Disney, Pixar, Warner Bros., and Nickelodeon. bit.ly/3toXlHJ
