LogInIvailo Ivanov talked about the production of his project Tognatale that replicates the likeness of Ragnar Lothbrok from Vikings and discussed character art in general.
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Introduction
Hello. My name is Ivailo Ivanov, I'm a 3D Character Artist working as a freelancer. I am from Sofia, Bulgaria, 23 years old.
I've been modeling since 2011 when I was a student. Before that, I used to draw a lot, mostly anime stuff. I used to paint different frames of a movement and then combine them in a gif maker because I didn't know any better way. That's how I made my first animations before I found out how animations for such movies as "Final Fantasy: Advent Children" or "Beowulf" were made. This inspired me to learn 3D software. However, even though animation fascinated me in the past, at present, I do not deal with it. The rigging and skinning processes seem really messy for me and I'm not a fan of that, so I leave this work to my more patient colleagues.
I currently work from home with various developers from indie to AAA. Job offers often come from Unreal Engine forums where employers find my work, and because of that, I've had a chance to collaborate with a lot of indie developers and contribute to their titles. Lately, I've had a lot of work with some bigger studios, including making main characters for upcoming AAA titles. Sadly, I can’t talk about my new projects a lot since I'm under NDA, but 2019 was a very big year for me. Hopefully, 2020 will be even better.
As I said, I always used to draw a lot when I was a kid. At school, I was only good at math, and all of the other subjects weren’t really important to me. All of the teachers knew me as a kid who would only have drawings in his notebooks. Art is not only my hobby, but it is also something that is really important to me and defines me.
In my work, I like to strive to get better. Doing this and getting paid from the comfort of my home, while improving every day is what I love about my work and I wouldn’t change it for anything else. I consider myself a truly lucky man.
About Tognatale Project
My favorite project I've done so far is my latest portfolio piece "Tognatale" that captures the likeness of Travis Fimmel's Ragnar Lothbrok from the TV show Vikings. The most challenging aspect was creating emotion without losing the likeness. The expression I picked was really hard to pull off as I had almost no reference for it from the actor. I only had one photo from the series of him doing a similar expression, so I had to improvise a lot.
To pull it off, I started from a skull and built all the major muscles and shapes over it, so that it was as anatomically correct as I could make it.
After that, I blended it all together and played around with the proportions some more before detailing it.
The eyes needed special care as well since Travis has a really wild, crazy look and vicious blue eyes. That is something I put a lot of time in to get it right. Hair was pretty hard as well - beards are always hard to do. And that braid was something special on its own. Luckily, it wasn’t the first time I was working on braided hair.
Software
I used ZBrush, Blender, Substance Painter, and Marmoset Toolbag.
Most of the work was done in ZBrush. I started sculpting from a sphere to a skull, added muscle tissue and then finalized the head. I later retopologized it in Blender and made the hair there using hair cards. I also unwrapped the entire model and prepared it for texturing which I did in Substance Painter with the help of some texturing XYZ maps I previously had baked. After I did all the textures, I created a scene in Marmoset Toolbag, setting up some shaders and lighting to produce the final result.
In terms of technical details, I followed my usual workflow, so I haven’t used any new methods. But I did have to focus a lot on the expression because that was the hard part as I mentioned earlier. This process and the general pipeline will be discussed in more detail in my ZBrush.Projects class.
Why Character Art?
There are many reasons behind my dedication to character art, but if I could scramble everything into a few points, the main one would be the fact that characters can tell a whole story, from the way they are clothed to their hairstyle, their eye color, and their scars. I very often get attracted to the characters in movies or games, and I think they are very important for a good story. I also think that making characters is the hardest part of Computer Graphics, not only in terms of the design but also the technical side, and it's really interesting and challenging. You need to have a good anatomy knowledge, great sculpting skills and an eye for fine detail. You need to know how to texture the skin, how to set up the shaders, etc.
Characters by Ivailo Ivanov
Speaking of character art, there is also so much room for improvement, both in terms of artistry and software. I'm sure that down the line we will be able to produce perfect-looking humans that are indistinguishable from a photograph or a video (some artists have gotten close results already). One of my ultimate goals is to do this but in real-time. Real-Time renderers are not as powerful as prerendering tools such as V-Ray or Arnold, that's why you can't compare the results yet. I do wish to be able to get to that level though which will enable me to do hyper-realistic portraiture using only real-time and I believe it will be possible in the future.
Advice for Beginners
I've nothing specific to recommend expect a piece of advice on how to get better - focus on mastering the basics of sculpting and do it regularly. It’s a skill that you learn.
Interview conducted by Moschenko Oleg
Ivailo Ivanov, 3D Character Artist
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