Making Stylized Anthropomorphic Shark Adventurer

Introduction 

Greetings! I am Vasyl Marchuk, and I am a 3D character artist who always tries to find solutions to problems. Mostly, I work as a freelance artist for outsourcing companies. So my way as an artist started from everything that was related, I was thinking so, to art. I began as a programmer, then I decided to switch to graphic design, then photobash.

After that, I tried 2D art, but nothing brought me that much fun as 3D art. 3D art gives you the possibility to control every single thing in the scene instantly in real time. That gives me the magic feeling that does not exist in the real world. I always have spare time for studying new and new features. The industry is growing, and it is hard to predict where it will be in a few years, but studying is never a mistake; it is a long-term run, and when you think only about money, you won't succeed. You should truly love to sit in front of a PC, digging into the unknown. Having a large library of tutors must be your best friend and the TikTok of traditional artists who explained the basics of coloristic.

Baby Shark

I am impressed by Rock D. He always has fresh new designs that are unique, what always impressed me since I started doing 3D art in 2021. His artworks are so alive and challenging, and at first sight it is easy to create a visualization, but when you start reverse engineering the concept you choose, the challenge begins!

I do not like making 3D art where you don't feel the flow of the character's charisma. I think 3D is a very time-consuming process, where spending a lot of time on art you don't like means you will not finish it. 

Working with references is the foundation of great 3D work. An artist's brain always works 100 present of its capacity and it is still is not enough some time so you need help of people with greater experience (ArtKusnia) or solutions that were made before you, don’t be afraid to analysis other peoples art work, you will always find something you need without spending ton of time sitting alone. 

For Baby Shark, it was complex because the sketch is alive with a bunch of strokes and unclear moments, but still, you have to save the main flow lines, which express the character. What was the first step before starting a 3D? The second step is to define the proportions and what size of objects due to other objects to measure the distance. I used some kind of ruler on the model. I chose a referenced distance and started to measure proportionally. Here, it was the distance between the shirt and belt, somewhere I chose the long side of the yellow glasses, it depends. Here, you may see how it looks in ZBrush, the yellow box is my ruler.

I found references that light up some places, which are hard to read. For me, it was boots, glasses, and a backpack, which deserves a separate article, I think. Combining references and asking experienced friends from Arkuznia, the Discord community, where the main vector is stylized art, which helped me figure up the final design.

Then I started from a quick sketch on iPad. After sketching, I realized something was missing, so I asked my friend Artem Yestelin to look at the shark photo, and he did. Then, he asked me once again, "What do you see?" I answered: "The shark." He asked what the shark consists of, how it swims, and I said the tail, that's how I was explained why it is so important to add something to the design.

In this artwork, I tried to break the idea that I can only draw a humanoid character, but I can create a diverse portfolio, experimenting with different character shapes. Then I defined materials before detailing the high poly to avoid mistakes to overdoing something that is not needed to represent this material.

Modeling

I modelled all hard-surface staff in ZModeler, which offers a wide variety of great tools. A lot of staff did not require retopology because it was done at a high-poly stage, so I did not use Blender at this stage.

For organic forms, I gathered a lot of shark references and analyzed how other artists draw sharks, so I compiled my version, saving the concept art line flow. Also, I analyzed the space between the outer line of form so which helped me to figure out where to go.

Sometimes, overlapping pictures in spot light projection is not working, so you go to Photoshop and make a self-check. So the main trick here is to learn where to start analyzing your artwork to avoid deepening into your mistake with wrong proportion, set proportion up before going to sculpting secondary digitalization on pictures, before you see an example, this saved me tons of time from not reworking digitalization twice.

Topology

For retopoly, I used Maya. It has a great folder hierarchy, which helps me to keep high poly and low poly in one stage, so I have control over every prop in the scene while retopologizing. Breaking up to materials was also a crucial part for better texel on the model. UV was also made in Maya. 

On the topology stage, I always want to balance between saving the silhouette and optimization for games. Base for hand painting, I baked it in the Marmoset Toolbag. 

It was fast to create retopo, UV, and bake, so let's move further. 

Texturing

I was taught on CGMA to use a grayscale pipeline. It is very popular among different artists to create a grayscale version for establishing value design. Try to understand those words. After setting up the value design, go to the shadow painting. An AO map may help you with it, but sometimes it is better to recalculate it using your artistic eye and add shadows in every place where they could appear in your environment.

Gradient control is a crucial part of this pipeline. If your colors do not seem deep but inverted – if the value of the shadow part is higher but the color seems darker – that is a mistake where a lot of beginner artists do not understand what to do, forgetting about the existence of hue, saturation, and lightness. Controlling all three will guarantee a great result.

I recommend that after setting up grayscale, you put the paint layer over all layers and apply a gradient filter to it. This will help you slide the color variations on the go, designing the hue of the model. So you do not need to overdraw again and again if you do not like something – just slide. I tried a few variations of this fish before I found that it should be pink. Below you may see an example of how I set up a material, and then, of course, I go to 3DCoat and overpaint the base.

Lighting & Rendering

For rendering, I used Blender, having a lot of addons, which helped me create a rig for posing, adding composition details on the go, such as LollyPop in the shark's hands, which gave more life to the shark. I found it interesting experimenting live with a model on the rendering stage. Feel free to experiment with your model, it is not finished after finishing texturing, but sometimes it is very important to go back to 3DCoat to redraw something that seems to be a mistake on render, and update the texture. I rendered with EEVEE. My light setup is pretty easy, helping light and some studio HDRI give me flatness where it is needed and shadows. 

Then I built up a black outline, but I need a special one where the line is not even through the whole model. Nodes for this effect I learned from YouTube: 

For final touches, I used the Colorista plugin in Blender to make the color feel juicy, but I'm always afraid to overburn it, is very thin ice to walk.

Conclusion

I spent about 80 hours finishing the project. The main goal of this character was to show, for a potential work offer, that I am able to sculpt any form, not only humanoid characters, but something different from what other people do for a portfolio. I always choose concepts that uncover new, interesting skills for finishing.

Establishing the value of character for its readability is crucial for every character creator. For beginners, I think the most important thing is to ask what it is made of. What material is it? What attributes does it have? Always look for references to everything before starting to do anything; that's how I was taught by clever people. I also always have a vision of how I want my visualization to look, and for it, I also have references.

Set up your work from big to small in every step of your work, even if you think the task is indivisible at first sight.

Vasyl Marchuk, Character/Prop Artist

Interview conducted by Gloria Levine