Creating a Warrior Creature in Blender, ZBrush & Photoshop

Introduction

Hello! My name is Jonathan Narvaez, I'm 23 years old, I'm from Ibagué-Colombia, and I'm a 3D Character Artist.

Since I was a child I loved the art of video games and movies, I have always been curious about how artists make that incredible art. Little by little, I was investigating how I could enter the world of 3D where my main focus was to create characters, and someday I hoped to see one of my characters in a video game, movie, or even printed. So, I was destined to do what I longed for since my childhood.

Then I saw an opportunity in a national institution in my city. It was very new as at that time I did not know any educational entity to learn this in my country. When I realized that in that institution I had the opportunity to learn 3D, I did not think twice and enrolled. There I learned the development of video games, where they put together art and programming. Although I learned some programming at that time I did not like it much, my focus was always on art and, to be more exact, on characters. When I finished the course, I continued studying myself and from there I began my ninja way as a creator of 3D characters.

I obtained my artistic skills in a self-taught way, as I said before, and with some courses that helped me to understand a little about workflow and tools. As time went by, I adapted my own workflow, and I was improving from practice and constancy. Sometimes people think that there is a quick magic formula to becoming a better artist, but the truth is the only magic formula is discipline and passion for what you do.

At first, I thought it was easy to achieve what other high-level artists were doing, and I was frustrated to know that it wasn't, but when I listened to several artists in their interviews and saw that they also started like me without knowing anything and that they polished their skills by their perseverance, discipline, and passion for what they do, I decided not to give up and take the art of those artists and motivate and challenge myself to be better every day.

Inspiration and References

The Shark project arose from a sea creatures-themed contest that was held on social networks. It consisted of creating a design based on either your own concept or the inspiration of another artist's artwork. For the Shark project, I started with gathering references which, I think, is the most important thing for every project you do. During all the development of the shark, I was thinking of 3D printing but for the contest, I had a little freedom since only the render was required.

My main goal was to prove to myself that I could get out of my comfort zone and face new challenges, and of course to give the best quality in the contest.

The contest was the main inspiration for me because I saw an opportunity to show my artistic skills, and the prizes were also an important factor to motivate and inspire me to do something amazing.

I always organize references by the type of elements I need, for example, fabric. Then I place the images that interest me in a group to have an order which will help me to have a better reading of the references.

Based on the references I had in my PureRef, I managed to get the most important things I would use to create an original design. I was looking for the morphology I wanted for my character and even the accessories he would wear. By analyzing the references I chose an animal shark that in my case would be a good representation of a great sea creature.

The concept was done with the assistance of my great friend who helped me a lot with capturing the main idea of what I collected in the references.

The Shark

The work on the shark became such a point in my life that divided it into "before" and "after" in terms of the work I had been doing. It was an incredible challenge that made me get out of my comfort zone, plus I really enjoyed the process where I learned new things for my future projects.

For this character, the major part of the working process was done in ZBrush and Blender. I did everything from a sphere and with dynamesh creating and polishing each part.

In the first stage, I started to give a characterization to my character with elements that would give it. I tried to deliver the sea warrior identity captured in the concept and tried different clothing variants. For this first stage, I started with a sphere and finished with what you can see below. 

Here I started to polish and refine the anatomy, thus generating a harmony in the creature's anatomy, where I was still looking for some of the clothing, accessories, and even facial expression that characterized my warrior shark.

In the next stage, I polished the primary details, creating a harmony in the whole character, for example making the skin and the fat of the character look more organic and adjusting the accessories and the pose. I tried to make a complex pose that would give more intentionality to my character.

After making the modifications to the pose, accessories, and even the anatomy, I started to create wrinkles, creases, scars, and wear and tear among others to further enrich the personality of my character.

Then I placed porosities and irregularities in the skin (to complement all the previous work), in the fabric textures, and of course in the weapons. I added very subtle details to give that feeling of a bone.

The coloring of the character is one of my favorite parts, it was a great challenge to make the skin have a very similar tonality to a real shark. It was a nice process I really learned a lot, the references here also play an important factor when it comes to coloring.

During the modeling process, I faced several challenges: from creating anatomy different from the canon of muscles and ideal proportions to the pose and accessories that fit the character's nature.

Accessories

The accessories were modeled from the blocking I had. I used polygonal modeling to have better control of everything.

For the staff, I used a mix of ZBrush and Blender. I also worked in Marvelous Designer but I only used it for the loincloth.

First, guided by the references, I identified how people used this kind of necklace. Taking this into account, I resorted to my previous files where I already had a skull that I had made weeks ago as a practice. Then I adapted and polished the necklace. For the strings, I used Blender, and the teeth were made from a sphere molded to the shape I needed.

Retopology

During the development of this character, I didn't use retopology for the texturing. I only used vertex painting during the whole texturing process since my process was done with the 3D printing workflow.

Texturing

For the texturing process, the fundamental thing was the references that helped me create a color palette. I used a sphere for that, this way I had better control of the shades that I wanted to put in my character.

For the texturing of the skin, I made a process of several colors to give it realism, in which I used dark-to-light tones. As for the configuration in the shader in Blender, I played a little with the SSS, AO, and Roughness, to give it that organic touch.

For the cloth and bone surfaces as well as for the skin, I analyzed the references to see what colors would make these accessories be similar to reality. I also considered the issue of dirt that gives extra value to the piece, so that it is not so perfect, referring to not having stains or any damage.

ZBrush was the only software I used for the whole texturing process.

The challenge I faced here was finding the proper color variation of the skin. I didn't want it to look like a basic color, so I tried to achieve the set of colors that create the perfect tone of the skin. It was difficult but a nice process. It was also a little challenging to create the fabrics, but once I found the right approach to one part, it was easier to apply it to the other parts.

Rendering and Lighting

Before I started this process, I did a decimation of the whole character to lower its polygonal weight but keep the detail I made, then I set up the scene with the lighting, the type of camera, and the materials I would use.

I used three-point lighting, where I added fill lights to complement these lights as there were very dark areas.

I used some color retouching for the final image, also adjusting the highlights and shadows a bit with the render passes I took out of Blender.

My recommendation is to look for the type of lighting that you would like your character to have, see many references, and work well on the materials. The most important thing here is to make them stand out in the light. It also took a lot of trial and error, and that's what eventually helped me to get a good result.

Conclusion

As I made this character for a contest, it took me one month to finish it – it was the limited time for delivery. I had to work every day without stopping to deliver the best quality in the shortest time possible.

My main source of motivation was my family and friends. The truth is that it is a fundamental pillar to have that confidence in yourself and know that they believe in your talent. Another factor to motivate me was the competition to see the progress of others who wanted to deliver the best result they can, and this gave me a feeling that I should never give up.

The main challenges for me were to get out of the comfort zone of making human characters. This gave me the opportunity to make a creature which was a really great challenge. Considering the time given for a character as complex as a shark, it was a surprise for me that I achieve this result in a month. It is something that I thought I would not get to finish but thanks to the motivation of those who believe in me I could face this great challenge and show that everything can be achieved if you believe in yourself.

If I had to give advice to the beginner Character Artists, I'd recommend starting with looking for the visual style that you would like to represent in your artwork. After that, do not go for the complex staff but look for some concepts or simpler ideas that help you understand the workflow of creating characters and tools that will be useful if you go towards more complex objectives, such as anatomy, composition, proportions, etc.,

Finally and most importantly, you need to have a lot of perseverance, discipline, and motivation. Your most powerful weapon to be a better artist is practice, with that you can achieve what you set out and to live what you like.

Jonathan Narvaez, 3D Character Artist

Interview conducted by Theodore McKenzie