LogInIntroduction
My name is Gino Kölling, I am a lead character artist working for games and entertainment. I got into character art as a teenager after playing around with graphic design tools like Photoshop and After Effects. I always wanted to make my own characters and creatures, having watched films like The Terminator and Aliens as a kid. I’m self-taught, always setting goals for myself to achieve and visiting artist workshops. I am also a very curious person by nature, which helped me learn new tools and workflows.
I have been in the industry for around 8 years and contributed to projects like Baldur’s Gate 3, Street Fighter V, Lost Soul Aside, Torchlight 3, and others.
Vulcan, Ruler of the Lower Floors
I initially started working on the Vulcan model because I had read a Korean comic called Solo Leveling. It had some really cool designs that I wanted to pay homage to, and Vulcan was one of these. I took references from the comic and mixed those with real-life images of gorillas, sumo wrestlers, volcanic rocks, and a few other animals to achieve a more realistic result. I was also inspired by the great cinematic work done by Blizzard, Blur, and other such companies.
Modeling
Generally, when I model, I always start in ZBrush. I roughly block out the form from a sphere and start adding key features of the character or creature. So I set up the eyes, the big mouth, and the horns first, trying to balance the anatomy and the design and to get a feel of the creature/demon. After I was happy with the blackout and the overall form, I did a simple ZRemesh to get a better topology and set up my mesh for final detailing. I then used some of my custom brushes and sculpted the details, echoing the larger shapes I set up during the blockout, occasionally taking a look at my references when I felt stuck.
I dragged the horns out with a Curve Tube brush, modifying the size so that I got a bit of a taper towards the end. I then modified the shape using the Snakehook brush and Sculptris Pro to sculpt it faster and leaving room for happy accidents with how Sculptris interacts with the mesh.
The body pretty much followed the same workflow as the head, I worked on them in tandem to get a sense of the proportions, avoiding working too much on one piece specifically, unless I was trying to figure out how to detail something. In those cases, I try to “benchmark” a smaller part of the character and then transfer that kind of detail treatment onto the other parts.
For the clothes, I grabbed a cylinder, cut off the ends, and then shaped it around the body. I tore it up where needed and tried to keep the work in the lowest subdivision possible so as not to confuse myself too much. Then I ZRemeshed it again, keeping it flat and moving to subdivision 5. It is important as I can add thickness later to the mesh by deleting the subdivisions and running a Panel Loops function with 16 loops that I could then reconstruct again afterward. I just find it easier to work on cloth when it’s one-sided to avoid intersections and fighting my own mesh. Like this, I can keep the width consistent.
The weapon was a cylinder sculpted with Sculptris Pro and then reprojected onto a clean ZRemeshed version of itself. For the bandages, I used the Curve Strap brush, manually adjusting the placement as I worked through the handle.
Retopology & Unwrapping
As this was a personal project, I wasn’t too concerned with getting perfect topology or UVs. They just had to be good enough for me to create something of good quality while also not spending too much time on it. Most of the meshes used the ZRemesher topology, however, I made clean cuts in the polygroups and made use of the ZRemesher polygroup feature to give me a better result, this usually works well enough for personal projects. If it was a production model, I would have to go in manually and really make sure everything was perfect.
Then I exported the lower versions of the mesh I had in ZBrush to unwrap them inside Blender and RizomUV. The body and head were set up in multiple UDIMs, keeping them separated in their different materials so the eyes, spikes, horns, weapon, body, and head would have their own UDIM sections.
Once set up, I brought them back into ZBrush and overwrote those subdivisions in the actual meshes with the unwrapped ones. The UV then gets taken over by the mesh I had before, as long as I did not change any topology order of course. That’s why it’s important to make sure your topology is clean enough before this step.
Texturing
I did all my texturing inside Substance 3D Painter. All my meshes had the same material applied in Blender, and I just made use of the UDIM feature to separate the textures. This way, it was easier to paint on the whole model at once. I did a quick bake in Substance 3D Painter but went to Marmoset Toolbag for the bakes of the body and head. I get some better maps and generally have more control there using the Preview feature to really get a clean result quite fast. The other meshes weren’t as complex, and I had separated them well enough that baking those in Substance 3D Painter was simple.
For the eyes, it’s a simple setup of painting in dark areas and then creating a painted iris in Substance 3D Painter using emissives. I vary my brush strokes using the Warp filter to create more complexity. There was no need to make a super detailed eye for this project, so keeping it simple where I can is a good way of saving time.
For the skin, I usually mix a lot of smart materials together and color-correct them to get a good base going. You can find quite a few online. I don’t use skin smart materials, however, and instead, opt for more random stuff that has nice usage of details and height layers blending together, sometimes even metallic smart materials, remembering to get rid of the metallic, of course.
In this case, the peeling paint effect was a great way to mimic skin blistering due to the intense heat of the environment (also a perpetually tortured existence as demons usually go). After my base is set up, I go in and paint a lot of things manually, such as color breakups, variations, highlights, color zones, extra details, and anything to really make things work as a whole. I always use my baked input maps and creating enough variation in the mask with paint, filters, and procedurals to mix things up. The warp or blur slope filters can be of great use.
This is how I texture anything, really, just having good references on hand and staying open to happy accidents, being aware of the material properties and how things should read in the model, and creating emphasis on the head and eyes.
I think the most difficult part was finding a balance between everything: the metals, leather, horns, and skin have to work together. It usually takes some time during lookdev to have them create a nice color composition that feels whole.
Rendering & Lighting
I set everything up inside Blender. The software works great, is fast, and yields good results. It feels up-to-date and has a lot of quality-of-life features that make it a strong, modern 3D package. Using Cycles and the standard lights, I usually set these up with the materials once I have my first rough pass of the textures. Getting a feel for how the materials interact with my texture outputs from Substance 3D Painter and the lights.
I organize a basic 3-point light setup with an HDRI or sun to boost the shadows a bit. Most of the lighting comes from the key light. I use the node feature on the lights to control the color with a Blackbody node, in this case, going for something warm and hell-like. The environment was created using materials from Megascans Bridge, and the lava was custom-made in Blender using material nodes and procedural noise.
I didn’t really do much post-production, just fine-tuned the contrast, highlights, and shadows. I think of post-production as a cherry on top, where the render is my cake. If it’s not working in the render, I will try to fix any issues there.
It’s hard to say how long it took in total. I worked on the sculpt on and off between a lot of other projects. But the tech setup, texturing, and renders took about 2 weeks; the high-poly sculpt probably about 3-4 weeks.
Sometimes it’s hard to stay motivated on a longer project like this, I usually mix in smaller projects in between that focus on different things. This usually helps me maintain good momentum and keep things fresh. I always have about 3 projects going at the same time, so yes, I will keep making more characters and creatures, maybe returning back to some Solo Leveling designs at some point as well.
Starting in Gamedev
I have worked for big companies before, and the most important aspect of getting a job at a larger studio such as Larian is your portfolio, of course, doing personal projects that align with the needs of the studio, basically proving to a hiring manager that you can do the work. Showing low poly, UVs, and how you set something up can be very informing. However, if you have worked professionally and can show that work, that tends to speak for your ability to provide a good asset, depending on the project.
Do not limit yourself to larger studios, however, getting started with outsourcing companies and getting work experience first can be a huge factor in getting hired for an in-house developer like Larian. You can also participate in big AAA projects this way. There is plenty of work out there where you can get your feet wet as a beginner, just keep learning as much as you can and build up your portfolio. It takes a long time and patience, so keeping at it and staying disciplined are the most important parts.