Creating Folklore-Inspired Nocturnal Vampire with ZBrush & Blender

Introduction

Hi there, my name is Hanyang Ng. I started learning 3D while I was in college, completing my 3D animation degree in Malaysia. Shortly after graduating, I enrolled in entertainment design at FZD to further enhance my skills as an artist. I don't particularly favor 3D over 2D. To me, it's all about the end result and the process of getting there.

The mix of learning on my own with tutorials and asking for feedback from my mentor is crucial to growing my skill set as an artist. In time, I learned how to give myself critical feedback and problem-solve on my own. Not to mention the failures I've encountered that shaped me into what I am today.

Early into my career, I started out as a freelance Concept Artist working on some minor projects here and there since 2016. It was only recently, in 2020, that I finally dipped my toe into the gaming industry, working for Kixeye during the time I even got to work on an unannounced Netflix movie. Currently, I am a Senior Digital Artist at Digital Extremes, working on Warframe and Soulframe. 

Inspiration & References

I'm a part of an awesome sculpting club named Hellfire Sculpting Club. We focus mostly on horror subjects, and our members are the most talented and skilled sculptors in the industry. Every now and then, we vote on a topic from a list to sculpt from. The last topic was a series of mini horror masks, Descent to Hell. This time, the topic was folklore from your country of origin.

There are many names for this particular creature that I have chosen, but where I'm from in Malaysia, it's called Penanggalan. It's a nocturnal vampire that takes the form of a floating disembodied woman's head with its organs and entrails trailing from its neck. There aren't very many references for this creature other than some 2D illustrations online, but then again, its descriptions are self-explanatory. I saw an opportunity in this creature to give it a 3D representation and try to bring this creature to what I envisioned it.

Modeling

I first started with Photoshop for some sketches, designing how I wanted her entrails to flow because we had a base to work with, then the face with different expressions and lastly the hair sketching out how I wanted it to flow as sculpting the hair would the biggest hurdle for me.

Once I got the design down, I went into ZBrush using a premade head from ZBuilder v3, a cylinder insert mesh that came with ZBrush for the intestine, and Sculptris Pro mode activated. I was able to quickly block out the initial shapes. Once everything is planned and blocked out, it's a matter of looking at references and sculpting the details.

For the hair, there was a lot of trial and error to get the workflow right. I wanted to go with a sculpted look instead of using fiber mesh or any other hair sim, as I wanted to have more control over the flow and practice sculpting hair in general. Like the intestine, I use the default insert mesh to block out the flow of the hair and then sculpt the details on it. In the end, I'm happy with how my hair turns out.

Once everything was done, I posed it a little, mainly tilting the head and expanding the entrails so they look like they are floating but still sitting on the base we have.

Retopology & Unwrapping

This part of the project was straightforward. Since this is a pure sculpt, I did not do any topology. It's a straight sculpt, I polypainted it in ZBrush and used GoZ into Blender.

Once in Blender, the only tweaks I did was on the roughness of the materials. For example, I would have a lower roughness on the organs to give them that wet and slimy look. 

Lighting, Rendering & Post-Production

The lighting was done in Blender. I used a simple 3-point lighting setup on the creature and one light to illuminate the background.

I always liked to put creatures I made into a cinematic scene once I was done with the beauty shots. For this, I made up two scenes, one at night in a rainy jungle and one outside of a kampung (village) house staring right through the window. I wanted to showcase this creature in its habitat, so to speak.

These scenes were all setup in Blender using various assets I gathered, mostly the trees, and the rest was modeled by me. I would find a few angles that bring out the terror in this creature and try to light it the best way I can. I always try to aim for realism in these cinematic shots, trying not to show too much, enough information to leave the viewers guessing and filling in the blanks. The term "less is more" is always in play here because I have to remember that I already have the beauty shots, and I don't need to show everything in these scenes. Once I got the angles I wanted, I would render them using cycle and bring them into Photoshop to do some paintovers.

The paintovers I do are mostly there to enhance the scenes, adding filters and painting out some abnormalities. I enjoy painting, so I try to give my works a semi-painterly look rather than a fully 3D render. I think it gives them a distinctive look.

Conclusion

Overall, I think it took me three weeks to complete this project after my day job. There was a lot of trial and error along the way, especially sculpting the hair but I'm glad I went through them and now I'm able to overcome the process of sculpting hair.

For the beginner artists out there, whether you're going for 3D or 2D, it's always a great practice to sketch out your ideas before you commit to them. They don't have to be pretty, and you don't have to show them to anyone. They're there for you to quickly put out on paper to see if the idea is solid. This will also prevent frustrations along the way. Sometimes, what we have in our heads won't look right on paper.

Thank you, 80 Level, for giving me a spotlight in this interview!

Hanyang Ng, Creature Concept Artist