Character Modeling for Collectibles: Juan Pitluk's Experience

Introduction

My name is Juan Pitluk, I am 34 years old. I am originally from Argentina but moved to Uruguay five years ago with my wife and kids. 

Back in Argentina, I've worked in-house for several studios, mostly for local films and commercials, and as a freelancer. Four years ago, I discovered the collectibles industry… and right away, I knew that it was something I wanted to do, so I focused all my effort on getting into it. I finished my first project for collectibles three years ago and kept working since then. Throughout this time, I was involved in many pieces including work for Diamond Select Toys. You can see my portfolio here.

Career

I was always interested in Arts, so I decided to study Fine Arts when I was younger. Back in 2009, Juan Casale, a friend of mine who works as a lighting artist, told me about ZBrush. I was working for an insurance company at that time. 

Like many others in Argentina, I am a self-taught artist. There were no schools for learning ZBrush so I started looking for any information I could grab, - anything I could find from Youtube, books, e-books, tutorials, everything was useful.

After 2 years of hard work, I got my first job as a character modeler for a local film.

Laughin´In the Rain! – Project Idea

The idea came to me back in 2011 after watching the film “Singin´ in the Rain”. I thought that the idea of having Joker parodying Gene Kelly would look awesome. I started the project back then but never finished it until now. I believe that my skills were not at the level of the project so I kept it in the back of my head for all these years.

Modeling

The project always starts as an idea, then I start looking for references (A LOT of them) that help define the concept.

I work with ZBrush for most of the projects. I use 3ds Max and V-Ray only for lighting and rendering and Photoshop for the final composition. 

Geometry is a mess! Since I am working on collectibles and the models are going to be 3D printed, geometry is not a restriction as it is for animation or video games. The whole ZBrush models end up having like 100 million polygons.

I always start with the basic ZBrush mannequin that I can pose like in the concept and then refine it and add all the elements. For most of my projects, I work without symmetry and this one was no exception. The process goes on while I am moving from area to area until I decide it is finished. An artwork is never actually finished, you can always keep refining and correcting things but at some point, you have to put it aside and move on.

For the pants, I used Marvelous Designer to create a base mesh which I'll refine later in ZBrush. You always have to refine Marvelous Designer result, add more wrinkles, adjust shapes, etc. The jacket was created all inside ZBrush starting from primitive shapes.

All the details were sculpted inside ZBrush as well, most of them by hand. NoiseMaker is also a great tool for adding texture alphas.

Believability

If you want to create believable characters you have to know anatomy. Not just the names of the muscles and bones but also shapes masses, rhythm. There are a lot of things that you should consider.

Presentation

I used a three-point lighting setup with very simple values. At first, I set the main and the rim light. Once I liked the result, I add a fill light if necessary. 

I used V-Ray for rendering and Photoshop for the final composition. I like to render a few passes (RGB Color, RawLighting, Reflection, RenderID, Specular, and ZDepth) which I'll then combine to enhance the picture. 

Afterword

Every piece is a challenge by itself. For this particular one, I wanted to push my skills to a new level in terms of storytelling, composition, rhythm, anatomy, details, and rendering.

I kept looking at references from my favorite artists and tried to emulate them, to see if I can get to their level. This is a piece of advice I can give you. Look at the works of other artists whose level you want to reach and compare your projects to theirs. Analyze what they do and why. And always ask for feedback!

As for the future, I'll keep working and studying to level up my skills. I would love to work for XM Studios, Prime 1, or Sideshow one day!

Juan Pitluk, Digital Sculptor

Interview conducted by Ellie Harisova