LogInMarco Gifuni provided a detailed breakdown of the Yokay Project, which contains creatures, clothes, jewelry, and weapons, using ZBrush, Maya, Cinema 4D, and Marvelous Designer. They also explained how the tonal variety in skin color was achieved.
Introduction
Hello! My name is Marco, and I'm a Senior 3D Generalist and Creature Designer. I've been extremely privileged to work in VFX, 3D, and motion graphics for 21 years with some of the best studios and clients in the industry. My main work focus is feature films and commercials, and I have had the honor of creating assets and characters for films like The Matrix, Meg 2: The Trench, Venom 3, and Ghost in the Shell.
I took my first steps in 3D modeling in 2003, and my software of choice was solely Cinema 4D (which I still use to this day, along with a lot of other stuff), and then came ZBrush and Maya. At the time, YouTube tutorials weren't as diffused as they are now. So it took more than expected to grasp the programs fully, but it was love at first sight.
I come from illustration, so drawing characters and monsters is what prompted me to approach digital programs many years ago and this, through the years, evolved into creating characters and concept art for movies and commercials.
About the Yokay Project
Yokay is a concept that I had in mind for a while. I wanted a creature in a lighting setup similar to a Boris Vallejo/Julie Bell painting, with subtle painterly shading, especially on the Hydra creature.
I gathered a few references, mostly for the clothing. I liked the idea of recreating a slightly medieval generic garment for the bottom half of the character and keeping it bare-chested.
It's supposed to be a warrior demon, after all; so in the end, I decided to add shoulder armor of sorts, daggers, and a few other decorative elements.
Modeling
I knew I wanted to work on the muscle definition and the pose and make it as accurate as possible. I also didn't want to retopologize the main character, as I knew it was going to be human-like. So, I started with a really basic male model with a clean topology and slowly worked on that.
The creatures were modeled in ZBrush; the jewelry and weapons were modeled in Cinema 4D and Maya, and the garments were created in Marvelous Designer. Everything was then UV-mapped in RizomUV and textured in Substance 3D Painter.
I use pretty much the same workflow for all my characters. I don't export Displacement Maps from ZBrush as it would be too time-consuming. Instead, I export the whole high-resolution character with GoZ into a Cinema 4D scene and render it with Redshift. I then use a Rizom exported to jump back and forth from ZBrush to RizomUV for the UV mapping.
Cinema 4D and Redshift can easily deal with millions of polygons, and since the majority of my characters for personal projects don't need to be rigged or animated, I leave them in the scene at their highest subdiv. I then use the lowest subdiv of the same characters for texturing and garment creation in Substance 3D Painter and Marvelous Designer.
My workflow also includes a series of assets I tend to reuse, like an eye setup I've created with a Redshift shader that allows me to customize the shape and color of each part of the eye, from the cornea to the retina, down to the amount of blood vessels.
For the grooming, I used the native Cinema 4D hair department and masks painted in SP to control the number of hair follicles. I then styled them manually to create a sense of movement.
Clothes & Dragon
For the clothing, I had a few little references I found on Pinterest for medieval garments. But in the end, I just came up with my own version of shoulder armor and a generic leather cover for the legs. The belt and the daggers were completely made up from scratch. I don't think I ever looked for a reference for those!
The clothes were created in Marvelous Designer and then exported in RizomUV to package and optimize the UV islands.
The concept of the dragons came later on. I knew I wanted some interaction between Yokay and another creature, but I wasn't sure what kind. I then settled on something that could wrap around the main character.
The dragons were modeled in a straight pose and then wrapped around the main character using a Spline Wrap Deformer in Cinema 4D. This gave me the possibility to fully control their pose and how their bodies coil around Yokay.
Controlling the pose with a spline was a huge time saver, and it's something I often do when I create dioramas like this one. I know I'm going to change my mind eventually, so I like to be able to amend the flow and position of single asset in the scene.
Preparation for Texturing
Everything was UV-mapped in RizomUV, which I've used for years now, and I find the quickest, most efficient way of unwrapping a large number of assets.
I usually import everything into Cinema 4D after I'm confident that there won't be major changes in the models, then name and group objects in nulls, and export everything to RizomUV. There, I can quickly create groups based on naming conventions I've previously assigned to single objects, which speeds up the process considerably. I've used roughly 65 UDIMs for this scene and exported each group into Painter for texturing.
Texturing
I usually texture my assets in Substance 3D Painter, using some of my own smart materials for generic items and jewelry. These are based on Substance 3D Designer shaders I created years back. They give me the freedom to control rust, edge wear, et cetera.
When it comes to creatures, I always start from scratch but use pretty much the same methods every time. I tend to overlay color layers, starting from a very dark undertone (usually red or green) and gradually stacking more and more hand-painted layers on the purple and blue hues to finally reach the surface layer, which is almost always a human flesh tone.
I also create custom Roughness Maps and region masks to then have more control in the shading stage in Redshift. In this case, for example, I've created a custom pass for the SSS, Roughness, veins, fingernails, and the areas around the eyes and mouth.
This process is very similar to a Verdaccio technique used in oil painting, and it gives a nice tonal variety in skin color.
Rendering
The scene was rendered in Redshift for Cinema 4D. I mostly use the same setup for the shaders, which is based on a layer stack connected to the textures and Mesh Maps of each asset.
The bulk of the work happens in the shading stages, as I combine Curvature, AO, and Custom Maps with the actual textures I've created in Painter.
For the lighting, I wanted the shadow to harshly define the shapes of the main character while still having fairly pastel-like colors and not desaturated. I also wanted to mimic a hellish kind of scenario, so I added a few red lights at the bottom of the characters to give the impression of fire and embers around. The dust particles are also in 3D; it's a setup I often use in Cinema 4D with a cloner and a few little randomized splines I can control the thickness of, so as to create the impression of hair and pollen floating in the air. I also added a few cosmetic touches in the comp, like motion blur and chromatic aberration.
Summary
I had to work on this character in between work projects, which made it all the more difficult to concentrate on. But I'd say that, all in all, it took a couple of months in total.
I didn't find the production per se challenging as the main workflow, as I said, was already established, and I'm fairly familiar with it. I, unfortunately, couldn't dedicate myself totally to this project, so I had to rely on bits of downtime I happened to have to work on it. As much as I loved working on it, as always, I'm never fully satisfied with the result. But I have to force myself not to endlessly tweak it, forget about it, and jump to the next project.
Advice to Beginners
My advice to beginning character artists would be to never stop loving what you do. Be respectful of the craft, try not to take unnecessary shortcuts, own your skills, and keep producing personal work.
I remember several years ago, a senior colleague of mine at MPC told me: "...you'll see, sooner or later, you'll get bored of working on big film productions. I've been doing this for a while, and it doesn't excite me anymore!" Well, I've now been doing this since 2003. I'm 40, and I love it now more than ever. So my advice to you is DON'T BE LIKE MY COLLEAGUE!
Never stop being excited about what you do because it will show, and the product will be affected by your lack of commitment.
I'm very fortunate to be part of the industry, and I still consider this one of the most interesting and rewarding jobs out there. Getting paid to be creative is a privilege not everyone can claim. Treat it as such, and you'll enjoy every minute of it.