How to Make Gruesome Stalker from Resident Evil 9

Introduction

My name is Afazil, and I'm from the Maldives. I'm currently working in Malaysia as a Character and Creature Artist. I love food, cats, art, running, and did I mention food? I got into 3D art back in college while studying animation. After spending some time animating, I quickly realized I preferred admiring animation rather than creating it.

That's when I discovered that 3D modeling, especially sculpting, resonated with me much more. Throughout my career, I've had the opportunity to work with companies such as Blizzard, Bandai Namco, FromSoftware, and NetEase Games on projects like Warcraft, Diablo, Gears, etc.

I'm a huge fan of Resident Evil. When I saw the new trailer and how terrifying the new monster looked, I immediately wanted to create a fan art piece. I've always loved Capcom's creature and enemy designs. This was my approach to working with the references for this project: 

Before I start most projects, I like to visualize how the final image will look in my head. Sometimes I get pretty close to what I imagined, and other times it turns into something completely different.

Once I'm done visualizing and before I start gathering references, I set specific goals for the project. It makes the reference-gathering process much easier when I know exactly what I'm aiming for. For this project, my main goals were:

• To create a fan art of the Resident Evil 9 monster.
• To learn core XGen.
• To experiment with an alternative to the projection workflow for tertiary and micro details.
• To improve my texture painting skills and achieve a prosthetic makeup-style look.

Once that's established, I plan roughly how much time to dedicate to the project, in this case, about a month and a half. Since I'm working on this outside of my full-time job, I usually get around an hour a day or less to work on it. I don't strictly follow the deadline, but it serves as a reminder to keep me from drifting too far off course or spending too much time.

References

Initially, I just download any images I can find and dump them into PureRef. Then I organize them and select a few favorites for each category. For the Stalker itself, I grabbed screenshots from the trailer on YouTube and a few more from the interwebs. There weren't many clear images available, but the fun part was figuring out the anatomy and details, or inventing them when necessary, without straying too far from the original design.

Then I spend some time studying the references and thinking about how to bring the image I initially visualized to life. I also jot down a few keywords and briefly describe the image or the emotions I want the audience to feel. For example:

• Repulsed (no thanks).
• Stalker staring at the audience creepily in dim, eerie lighting.
• Roaring intensely, with saliva and spit, with motion blur.
• Stalker in shadow, strong backlight, face obscured.

I also make a list of what I want to show and which parts of the creature will be the highlights of the final image. I know the eyes and teeth will be front and center, so I pay special attention to these areas, looking for appropriate references while also thinking about the composition. I like to categorize my references as follows:

• Mood
• CG target
• Sculpting
• Texturing
• Lighting

Shout out to Bitemakers and Barrie Gower, I studied their work a lot and tried to see how I could replicate their techniques in 3D. I also drew inspiration from Jordu Schell, as well as Daren Horley's work on Ebony Maw for the Avengers.

I also make a note to find prosthetic references since real wounds are difficult to look at. I do have some cadaver references for anatomy, but I generally avoid actual wounds or injuries because they're nauseating. I might look at them occasionally if I need a very specific reference, but I don't include them in my PureRef.

I also reference my own work sometimes, mainly for elements I really liked but didn't end up using in a previous piece. In this case, I drew inspiration from the heavy depth of field, the single light source, and the cinematic feel.

I really liked this shot from the trailer because my immediate reaction was "nope". That's why I like to write keywords at the beginning. At this point, I still haven't started sculpting. While I don't do this for all of my personal projects, I find it really important to think through and visualize how I want the final image to look before starting.

Planning is especially helpful when you have limited time. For a portfolio piece, I'd say it's vital to spend some time thinking and planning properly, as it really helps you stay focused. For a still image like this, you don't necessarily need to detail the parts that won't appear in the final render, and that's where planning becomes crucial.

Regarding composition and lighting, I decided from the start that the piece would be well-lit, as I wanted to showcase the sculpting and texturing details. I debated this choice in my head for a while, since it would definitely be creepier to show less and let the audience imagine the rest (similar to the image above). That's one of the things I really love about horror: the unknown and the unexplained.

Sculpting

As for ZBrush, the brushes I use most commonly are ClayBuildup, Slice Curve, and Inflate. I especially enjoy using the Inflate brush at a lower intensity to build up forms, as it creates nice, rounded results, particularly for large areas like the forehead, brows, jaw, and chin.

Starting a sculpt from scratch and blocking out the forms is one of my favorite parts of the process, especially pulling and pushing the primary shapes. I absolutely love sculpting! When I block out a mesh, I usually keep it at a medium distance and focus on getting the overall shapes right.

I avoid zooming in at this stage, as it helps me maintain perspective on the overall forms. I recommend practicing this during the initial stages of sculpting, as it's very easy to get distracted and start detailing one area too early. At this stage, it's all about making the primary shapes look good from a distance.

I also have a custom UI and sub-palette setup tied to a hotkey for the tools and functions I use most often, like DynaMesh, Del Hidden, Split Hidden, Merge, Polish by Features, and so on. It's much easier than hunting through the tool palette or menus. I highly recommend setting this up, as it makes sculpting a much more seamless experience.

This is also roughly the distance I keep my model at when working on the primary shapes. I've set a custom view under ZAppLink properties so I can quickly snap back if I find myself zooming in too much while sculpting details. When working on primary shapes, my main goal is to create clean, readable forms, especially at the points where the form turns.

Once I'm done with the initial block out, I crank up the light intensity and have a look at the model to check the graphical read and identify areas that look wobbly or muddy and clean them up. I do this step even after I've done detailing, as sometimes you might lose a cool secondary form you sculpted when you start using alphas to add details. I also like to check the overall silhouette. I like Giger-inspired silhouettes.

At this stage, I also bring the sculpt into Maya and do a few test renders to evaluate the forms under actual lighting and true camera focal length. This is also when I test the composition and make notes on which areas need the most attention and detailing, and which areas don't.

These renders are intentionally low-quality, as I like to check if the image reads well in thumbnail view. It forces me to focus on silhouettes and overall forms, which I find really helps in refining the final composition. I may revise the camera composition later based on references I find. It's always a very iterative process, and I enjoy figuring it out as I go.

This is also when I create the UVs before continuing with the detailing. I use ZRemesher with polygroups for auto-retopology and UV Master to quickly unwrap the UVs, then arrange them in Maya. I also adjust the scale of the model to something closer to human proportions or, in this case, larger than a human, as seen in the trailer.

Based on the initial lighting tests, I go back to ZBrush to refine the forms. Once I'm happy with the primary and secondary shapes, I do a quick, rough detail pass and apply some alphas (shout out to the FlippedNormals Skin Kit) to see how the forms hold up with detail. I do this on a separate layer so I can delete it if needed or keep areas that I feel work as they are. Most of the details get refined later.

Again, I use lights coming from both sides to better see how the forms turn. As you can see, the primary and secondary shapes don't change much. One thing I remind myself is that I can adjust primary and secondary forms at any point since it's digital and there's undo. However, for beginners, I highly recommend practicing in order: primary, secondary, then tertiary shapes. Also, get into the habit of working from a distance when sculpting the primary forms.

Before moving on to tertiary forms and detailing, I realized I was missing one important element: the hair. I took this opportunity to do a quick groom in ZBrush, as well as a rough polypaint, just to see how it looks. It's a nice break from staring at a gray model. I also recommend occasionally switching between different materials to see how the forms read, and try something with more or less specularity.

Now that's done, I feel the primary and secondary forms are in a good place, so I start adding alphas and working on the tertiary forms. The reason I focus so much on getting clean primary and secondary forms is that they provide a solid roadmap for the tertiary forms.

I can't stress enough how important it is to sculpt the tertiary forms properly. Peter Konig used to have excellent videos on Vimeo demonstrating how he sculpts tertiary forms. Here's the only one I could find online:

Also, take a look at artists like Gio Nakpil and how they approach tertiary forms, or forms in general. The flow from one form to another is beautifully done. It's like poetry. In the example below, notice how the tiny details follow the larger forms.

A good rule of thumb for adding wrinkle directionality is to observe the underlying muscle structure. For example, the muscles on the forehead are vertical, so the wrinkles naturally form horizontally.

Also, this video from Keos Mason illustrates this point really well. It's a lot of manual work, but you'll have a lot more control, and it's really fun to do:

There is a certain rhythm to the anatomy and shapes and forms, and you can do a screengrab and draw over the model as well.

Amid all the surface details, try to use the forms and wrinkles to guide the viewer's eye. I usually use the projection workflow for detailing, but this time I wanted to experiment with alphas and see how far I could push the details. For this, I used the FlippedNormals Skin Kit, which offers a great variety of skin alphas, including tertiary and micro details.

While I didn't achieve the crispest detail compared to scan data, the results were still very good, and I highly recommend giving it a try. I chose to use alphas because the projection workflow can feel a bit repetitive at times, and I wanted to stay within ZBrush as much as possible. I also enjoy the hands-on, manual aspect of detailing.

Texturing

Before I start painting, I take some time to study the references and observe how people paint prosthetics. I didn't find many tutorials or videos online, so I mostly had to figure things out by closely examining the references. Much of the painting is airbrushed, so I needed to find a way to translate that effect into 3D. I used Polypaint for the base and then finished the piece in Substance 3D Painter, essentially building up subtle layers of paint on top of each other, a lot of layers.

Here's an example of how I study references: I blur out the image to focus on the big blocks of color, values, and tones. I look at how textures or patterns are used in contrast with dark and light areas, and I observe which cavities have lighter tones and which have darker ones.

I start polypainting in ZBrush by filling the mesh with a low-saturated dark red. I then use the DamStandard Brush at low intensity with Color Spray and either ALPHA 07 or ALPHA 22, lightly brushing in a circular motion to build up the color.

Sometimes, I also use Spotlight Projection to project a human skin texture (any XYZ face texture will do). The goal is simply to fill the mesh with a base color to start from. Here's how the stroke looks.

There wasn't a specific technique beyond trying to replicate the motion of an airbrush in ZBrush, painting in circular motions. The rest was mostly trial and error to achieve the right look. In the end, what worked for me was lightly brushing different complementary colors on top of each other to replicate the look of my references on the model. I have the process recorded, and hopefully, I can edit and upload it in the future.

Then I import the model into Substance 3D Painter and repeat the process of building up layers. I used a variety of procedural, cloud, and noise textures at very low intensity for the bluish and reddish regions of the face. At a glance, it's subtle, but it helps break up the surface.

Starting with large volumes of blurry colors as a base and sharpening them as you add detail also helps a lot, similar to sculpting with primary, secondary, and tertiary forms.

My main takeaway is to pick your main color swatches and values before you start texturing, and then build up the layers using those. This prevents muddy colors. It's also nice to have a bit of contrast between lighter and darker values, especially at edges or transitions between colors.

Lightning

I use Arnold for my renders. My lighting setup is fairly simple: one HDRI light (from HDRI Haven, of course) and one kick light, along with some planes to block light in certain areas. Since I decided to present the model in fairly bright lighting and had already chosen a reference early on, there wasn't much experimentation, it was more about drawing inspiration from the reference and replicating certain elements.

I really liked the yellowish, harsh kick light in the reference, so I made sure to include it in my setup. The main principle I keep in mind when lighting is to work from a distance (thumbnail view) and ensure the image reads clearly and is visually readable from that perspective.

Another thing is that, since the creature's design is very asymmetrical, I wanted to show it from both sides to capture all the nasty details. Sometimes, when I'm happy with a certain composition or render, I bring it into Photoshop and do a rough comp.

For example, in the image above, the rough comp helped me identify areas that needed to be punched up or toned down in the shader or specularity, as well as spots where a simple paintover would suffice. As you can see in the final image below, most elements didn't change much, which is why I believe it's always good to figure things out at a lower resolution before committing to the final work.

As for the shader, there are plenty of tutorials available on creating a good skin shader. Kris Costa recently released his entire course library for free on YouTube. I highly recommend checking it out and learning from the master: The Antropus. However, you can see my shader setup below. I had the Roughness and Coat slightly higher than they normally would, as latex masks look slimy.

One of my main goals was to learn XGen Core. Since I'm already familiar with XGen Interactive, the transition wasn't difficult. I wanted to explore XGen Core because the results from the clump and noise modifiers generally look better compared to Interactive.

What helps me most when learning something new is starting completely over if I encounter a mistake I can't troubleshoot. I simply delete the entire hair description or guides and begin from scratch. It might feel repetitive, but there's something about starting over repeatedly that helps engrain the knowledge in your brain.

It also helps that the hair in this project isn't very complex; learning is easier when you start with a simpler groom and then repeat the process until you can do it without referencing tutorials. For detailed steps, I highly recommend Master Jesus FC's tutorial series. It's a wealth of information covering everything from basic to advanced techniques within XGen. It's all there.

The next step is compositing in Photoshop. I usually render my images slightly underexposed so I can use LUTs or adjustment layers to bring them to the correct exposure. Some smaller enhancements, like additional bruises, blood, or bloodshot eyes, are painted directly in Photoshop.

The reason for this is to save time, sometimes things happen unexpectedly, resulting in happy accidents. Rather than going back to Substance 3D Painter to fix small details, I simply add them in Photoshop. Since this is a still image and personal work, you don't need to be overly particular about minor details.

I also made some proportion adjustments to the head using Liquify, just to even out some of the larger shapes. This is perfectly fine for personal work, especially if you've allocated a specific amount of time for the project. Additionally, I rendered a low-quality turntable for Instagram and Twitter, because it's always satisfying to see the model spin and watch the specular highlights interact with the small details.

Conclusion

It took about a week and a half to two weeks in total to complete, in terms of hours spent. The main challenge was actually sitting down to work at the end of a long day and committing to the time. Sometimes I'm unable to stick to the routines I've set for myself, in which case I try to spend at least 20 minutes to half an hour, especially if I've had a busy day or other commitments.

In these situations, I plan exactly what I'm going to work on and stay focused on that task for those 20-30 minutes. I usually try to work on personal projects before starting my workday, and I find that works best for me.

One thing I noticed a bit too late was that the creature is actually hunched over quite a lot. I was adjusting the composition, and something felt off. When I compared my model to the screenshots from YouTube, I noticed the difference. By that point, I had already done a lot of sculpting, texturing, and baking displacements, so I didn't go back to change the pose and proportions.

Overall, I also feel the head in the original design was more elongated compared to mine, apart from the hunch, these were two major aspects I wasn't able to fully convey in my artwork. That's okay, though. I'm quite happy with how the final image turned out, and I accomplished most of the goals I set for myself.

My favorite part of the process is always blocking out the mesh and figuring out the anatomy, as well as the texturing phase. I really enjoy learning more about color and painting techniques, especially traditional approaches, and I hope to continue improving in that area moving forward.

Lastly, I want to say how much I love Resident Evil as a series, especially RE7, and how each flagship title introduces something new, including the unique creature designs. It has always been a huge source of inspiration and influence in my art. Huge props to the artists at Capcom for creating all this amazing work!

Ahmed Afazil, Character Artist

Interview conducted by Amber Rutherford