ZBRUSH | BLENDER | SUBSTANCE 3D PAINTER
Discover how Prashan Subasinghe builds up the narrative in his shot with a gentle lioness
Great storytelling moments come from a personal and emotional connection. This story is about family and lineage, with its inspiration coming from the idea that we’re representatives of a long line of people that goes back to the beginning of time, and how the spirit of our ancestors reaches out from the past. The key to this story lies in the design of the main character: the lioness.
In this tutorial, I’ll walk you through how I created her, as well as how I approached the 3D character design. There are many other elements that come together in the final piece, but we’ll keep the focus on the creation of the main character here.
AUTHOR
Prashan Subasinghe Prashan is a 3D character artist and generalist based in Minneapolis, with experience in character modelling for production and visual development. bit.ly/3Izdcb3
01 CREATE A CHARACTER DESIGN BLOCKOUT
Start off with a quaded sphere by choosing a QSphere under the Initialize option in ZBrush, and use this as the initial piece to blockout the character. You can duplicate the shapes by hitting Ctrl and then dragging with the 3D Gizmo. Maintain separate polygroups for ease of selec tion and have them symmetrical in the beginning. Also use Dynamic Subdivision to achieve a smooth surface without subdividing the mesh. The two main brushes you should be using during this step are the Move and Transpose brushes. The lower topology provides the ability for us to create the overall shapes of the character.
02 POLISH THE MESH
Now turn off Dynamic Subdivision and Subdivide the mesh. Use any sculpting brushes as required such as Clay, Trim Dynamic and hPolish to tidy the mesh. Try to achieve an appealing design aesthetic by using big, medium and small features. I find it’s helpful to create eyes here as a placeholder to design the facial shapes around them; you can make them by adding a sphere and Polypainting it.
03 NEUTRAL POSE
Before moving on to the next step, pose the character in a way that the parts don’t combine in any undesirable ways. In this case, I opened the mouth and spread the limbs and fingers. You can achieve this by masking and moving these parts.
Blockout focus Try to spend 20-40 per cent of your time in the blockout phase. Although simple, it’s the most valuable phase of character creation, where you can make mistakes and try out interesting shapes. Use either ZBrush’s Thumbnail or Silhouette views to really hone in on the design and come up with appealing shapes.
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