Creative Portfolio Development

ZRemeshing and Polypainting As the mesh so far had been made completely using Dynamesh in ZBrush, I thought it was time to start combining the separate subtools of the creature into one. Since the design of the face isn't going to change drastically from now on, I chose to ZRemesh it so that it had lower geometry and I could step up the subdivisions as and when I needed to. As the mesh wasn't going to keep the detail of the Dynameshed model, I had to project the details over once the mesh was ZRemeshed. Above is the ZRemeshed version of my mesh at it's lowest subdivision level. Polypainting In order to add visual interest whilst continuing sculpting, and to help get an idea of materials and colours in advance, I decided to do a quick Polypaint over the model in ZBrush. This also helps when creating pieces to fit in with the design as it allows to quickly experiment with ideas.For example, I'm not sure whether the ...

Refining Design Further After picking a better armour design and improving the face of my creature sculpt, I started to refine the character as a whole. I started thinking about how the armour would fit together and could be incorporated into the alien creature's body. I also wanted to have some sort of mechanical piece included so that it gave a nice contrast to all of the organic armour pieces, and also I could add some emissive lights later on in the texturing stages. I added some feather like strands out of the back of the creatures skull. I feel that this adds to the silhouette and makes the creature seem more organic. However, this was just an experimental piece of geometry and may change later on. I went through a few design iterations on the shoulder guard shell piece. I feel that it looks organic and as if it could be a hard shelled creature/skeleton that the alien has used as a defence piece, maybe as if maybe the alien creature...

Changing The Face Whilst continuing on with the sculpt, I re-evaluated the creature's face and expression, and came to the conclusion that it didn't look angry/creepy enough for the look that I wanted.  I went through a couple more variations of the face and played around with expressions and ended up with a snarl like pose. The above face is what I chose to continue to work with as I felt it worked well with a snarl and made the creature look more menacing.

Changing The Armour I decided to start roughing out some more armour shapes in Zbrush to see if the designs that I liked in Photoshop worked as well in 3D. I started off by picking my favourite design from Photoshop and working off of it in Zbrush, just with basic shapes so that I didn't spend too much time on small details. I feel that the most interesting and fitting design is the above one as it looks as if the creature has incorporated the armour as part of his body and I feel this works well.    

More Concepts I continued experimenting and trying to narrow down a concept for the armor that my character was going to have. For these concepts I reused a few bits that I liked from the previous concepts I had and added pieces together.

Armour Concepting Recently I have decided to start concepting armour in Photoshop instead of ZBrush so that I can brainstorm rough shapes quickly and iterate more.  I used a screenshot of my creature from ZBrush to use as a silhouette to draw over to get the forms right.  I mostly used the lasso tool to get quick, crisp edges to make the armour look hard surface. Concepts At this point I'm not bothered about colour, more just the silhouette and overall shape of the armour. From here I will go on and start picking aspects that I like and continue refining it until I get something that I'm happy to start modelling. Reference/Inspiration Below is a moodboard of a selection of armour pieces that helped aid my designs and helped generate the concepts.

More Armour Experimenting I've been continuing to concept what sort of armour I want my character to wear and how it would fit over the skin and where it would connect. So far I am still just concepting ideas by blocking out rough shapes and flattening them down to make them look hard surface. Overall so far I am not happy with the armour design and I will need to put a lot more thought into how it will fit together and what sort of indents/pipes etc I will add to it to make it stand out more and look more believable/alien.

Refining Creature Concept And Anatomy I have continued to refine my creature concept by improving the anatomy and adding extra details to the face and mouth. I decided to detach the lower jaw so that I could get a better view inside the mouth, and so that I could add gums and teeth easier. I also improved on the anatomy slightly to get a better feel of how the creatures bones would stick out and it's skin would crease and wrinkle etc. I still need to improve further on it but I feel it's getting better. I experimented with adding hard surface exo-skeleton bones that would be extruding out of the skin.