How to Sculpt & Texture Juri Han from Street Figther 6 in a Dynamic Pose

Introduction

Hi everyone! My name is June Iec, and I am a 3D Stylised Character Artist based in London, UK. I recently graduated from University of the Arts London, where I discovered 3D character art and have been growing my skills through mentorships and personal projects.

Currently, I am working as a Creative Services Graduate Intern at Warner Bros. Discovery, so I mainly do 3D as a hobby, and I enjoy doing challenges and collaborations with friends. In writing this article, I am expressing that I am doing this in my personal capacity.

Juri Han – Capcom Challenge

I started the Juri Han project as part of a challenge hosted by Jessie Chan and Adrian Horodyski for a close bunch of Character Artist friends. The project is to create any character from the Capcom franchise within a 2-month time frame, with each participant also receiving a designated pose to recreate for added difficulty.

I picked Juri Han from Street Fighter 6 because I found her very visually appealing, and I wanted to use this opportunity to potentially get a dynamic pose, as Juri is a very flashy fighter in the game. My main personal goals were to practice gestural flows and clothing folds, so I made sure to pay extra attention to those details in this challenge.

Concept

Since we had the freedom to choose the look of the characters we picked out, I went with one of the concepts created for the Street Fighter x Aespa collaboration. I particularly liked this concept as I thought her flowy trousers would be good practice for some dynamic clothing folds, and her twintails could make for some interesting flow and silhouettes. 

When picking out a concept for sculpting in pose, I think it is important to consider how well something can translate into 3D, as not all concepts are created equally. Even though there were concepts I found more visually appealing than the one I actually went with, I passed on those options because multiple elements in the concept could pose a problem in terms of readability and how much they could potentially clash with each other, therefore making the final product messy with too many distracting elements. I also kept in mind the restrictive timeframe, so I used a simpler design for fear of overscoping.

Workflow

Like most character projects, I started by gathering my references for different elements of Juri. I focused particularly on key aspects such as the anatomy, clothing, hair, and stylistic inspirations. When working on something that is difficult or unknown, I like to gather as many references with different angles as possible. In this instance, I gathered references for different types of kicks and how they will inform different muscle groups, and how they contract or relax.

Normally, I would also recommend trying to recreate your desired pose and taking photos for customized references, but I'm afraid I am not able to recreate this kick without pulling a muscle, and a quick trip to the emergency room.

After reference gathering, I started by blocking out the character in A-pose to ensure the proportions of the body remain accurate. I tend to leave everything super low-poly and in symmetry during the early stages, as it keeps things flexible and changes can be implemented easily. Once body proportions were correct and to my liking, I started blocking out the clothing by extracting the shapes from the existing body.

I would also start adding in some colours by this point, just so I have a better idea of how well the character is reading. I usually start by painting a general outline of the face, as it helps make the character feel more alive, and I know how much appeal it has in its current stage.

Obstacles

The pose is by far the most complicated aspect of this project. As I had planned to solely keep Juri as a high-poly sculpt, I used ZBrush's Transpose Master to manipulate the A-pose body into the desirable pose.

Getting the pose right for this project was honestly down to trial and error, on top of feedback sessions I would receive from friends. To ensure I have a solid base to keep working off of, I saved out the A-pose version as a ZTool so I can always go back to it in case something goes wrong while working with Transpose Master. As this is a stylised character, I think it is also important to remember that sometimes breaking the anatomy is necessary for better silhouettes or to make the character feel more dynamic.

Instinctually, Juri's legs can look a bit broken, but it can help sell that she is in mid-kick. I also cannot stress the importance of feedback and getting other sets of eyes to look at your work (Shout out to my mentor, Lauren Lapierre Armande, and other amazing friends who have given me feedback!), as it might be harder to remain objective about the project after you've been working on it for quite some time.

Sculpting the Hair

Once the pose and general gesture of the character are complete, it is now time to refine! My favourite aspect of this refinement stage is definitely sculpting the hair. I created most of the large chunks of hair with the Curve Tube brush and carved out hair strands with brushes like Dam_Standard and Sk_Slash. 

For the flyaways, a faster way to get multiple small strands that follow the existing hair chunks you've already made is done through the following steps: Make a curve tube replicating the chunk of hair you've already sculpted, reduce polys if necessary through ZRemesher, use ZModeler to alternate the polygroups of the tube, and frame the polygroups in the curve functions tab.

Once the lines on the tube are framed, use the curve tube brush to click into the framed edges, and multiple tubes should appear. Refine and delete tubes that aren't necessary, and you have your flyaways!

Texture

As this is strictly a high-poly project, I kept the texturing within ZBrush so everything was done through polypainting. Even though there are no layers and different blend modes like in Substance 3D Painter to get lots of colour variation, I still tried to instill some of those principles into the polypaint so that the character doesn't look completely flat.

I referenced colour zones of the face and body, adding subtle shades of yellows, greens, and blues in the skin to make the character look more lively. As no baking was done for this project, faking some Ambient Occlusion in the polypaint can also help distinguish each subtool.

Metallic, Roughness, and other PBR details, such as Subsurface Scattering, are added in Marmoset Toolbag to complete each material. When playing around with the material sliders in Marmoset Toolbag, I tried to picture the effect I am trying to achieve rather than being stuck to the confines of its supposed material.

For example, as I wanted to highlight the foot in the high kick, I amped up the Subsurface Scattering way more than normal (in fact, if you look at it from the other angle, it almost looks like jelly) so that it would look like there is blood coursing through the foot. It is important to remember that this would only work if you want to render in only one specific angle.

Post-Produccion

To make Juri look more dynamic, I changed the camera Field of View so that it would look more like the character is kicking towards the camera. In terms of lighting, I was restricted to keeping the rim light on the left side of the character, as it would help make the final render with everyone's work more cohesive and easier to work with. However, I also added an extra light on the foot as I wanted more focus and support for the strong subsurface scattering on it.

As the final product is a flat image, I also did small tweaks in Photoshop, such as increasing the saturation, adjusting levels, and small paintovers to fix the areas that I was unable to manage in the rendering phase, things like unwanted shadows and highlights that are too strong.

Conclusion

I learned a lot during this challenge. It was my first time doing a full character in a difficult pose, and I'm proud of what I have achieved over the course of two months. It was also amazing to be able to collaborate with my fellow Character Artists and get everyone excited about their craft. For more renders and other participants' submissions, you can check out my ArtStation post here.

Feel free to check out my socials too: ArtStation, X/Twitter, LinkedIn. Thank you for reading, and thank you to 80 Level for allowing me to write this article!

June Iec, Stylised Character Artist

Interview conducted by Gloria Levine