Making the Portrait of a Harry Potter-Inspired Goblin with Realistic Skin Texture

Introduction

My name is Enrique Mateo-Sagasta, and I'm a Senior Creature Modeler at ILM Vancouver, where I've been working for almost five years. I've worked on several shows, but Lilo & Stitch has been the most meaningful to me. I was tasked with modeling Stitch and his facial expressions. It took a lot of work, and thanks to an amazing team of talented artists, I think we were able to translate the animated character into live action pretty successfully.

It's been a busy year for personal work, too. I've become very comfortable with my workflow at home, so I've been trying to take some of my more successful studies all the way to finished pieces. That's what happened with the Chimp, the Viper, and the Goblin.

Getting Started with the Goblin

The Goblin actually started as a quick sculpt of a male bust. Once I finished, though, I thought, "Okay, another practice sculpt with no story behind it." I wanted to turn it into something more interesting, so I started gathering references. 

I usually use Pinterest because one image leads to another, and the possibilities feel endless. I also tend to have movies playing in the background while I sculpt – usually films I've seen many times that still inspire me. It's almost like listening to music.

This time, I was working my way through the Harry Potter films, from the first to the last, so the Gringotts goblin influence was definitely there.

Modeling

All the main facial elements were already there in the original male bust, so the first step was to play with the proportions: larger, pointed ears, a bigger nose, and those classic goblin features. The challenge was making those changes feel believable. Even though he's a fantasy creature, the features still need to fit together in a way that makes anatomical sense. There was a lot of experimentation involved in finding that balance.

The turning point came when I focused on the size of the cranium and the relationship between the head and shoulders. Getting that relationship right established the character's sense of scale. From there, I could work my way down to the individual facial features and refine them within that overall structure.

For the wrinkles, I tried to think about the underlying anatomy and how the skin would naturally compress around the facial features. Rather than simply carving lines into the surface, I wanted the folds to have volume and direction. I use some alphas as a starting point, then build from there, adapting the finer details to the character.

The most important part is sculpting the secondary forms, such as the main wrinkles and folds, by hand, and then integrating them with the tertiary details, like pores and smaller wrinkles, so everything works together at different levels of detail. I also introduced asymmetry and smaller secondary wrinkles to make the skin feel more organic.

Topology & UVs

I usually start my sculpts from a sphere. It forces me to build the primary shapes of the head first, and I find that exercise challenging in a good way. It helps me keep those fundamental sculpting skills sharp.

Once I'm happy with the primary and secondary forms, I use a base mesh with existing UVs, provided by 3D Scan Store, and manually fit it to my sculpt. That step doesn't take me very long, although there are tools that can make the process easier.

Keeping the original UV layout allows me to use their texture maps if needed. For my personal projects, though, I enjoy painting and sculpting the details by hand, and I can work fairly quickly that way. For the Goblin, I took that hands-on approach to sculpting and skin painting.

Texturing

I find ZBrush very powerful for painting skin. I start with a base skin color and then build up regional variations, much as I would in a painting. For example, I introduce more red around the ears and nose, where blood beneath the skin can be more visible.

I use the spray functionality of the brush to introduce variation between the individual dots. That helps break up the color and adds a lot of realism. I also use a vein-shaped alpha to suggest blood vessels beneath the skin, then gradually build up more detail and variation.

Subtlety is essential, and I regularly check the results by rendering in Maya. It's easy to go too far and make the skin look painted or dirty. Being able to adjust the colors directly in ZBrush – for example, masking the lips and reducing their saturation – makes it much easier to get close to the result I want. After that, I usually only need minor adjustments during look development in Arnold.

I don't use a cavity map for the skin. I let the displacement and subsurface scattering do that work. Combined with the lighting, those elements give me the realistic skin response I'm looking for.

For the vest, I used free texture maps from Poly Haven. I use their HDRIs as well; it's a great resource and a website worth supporting. I added two fur systems to the fabric: one to break up the overall surface and another specifically for the edges. I also used Arnold's aiCurvature node to vary the diffuse appearance and give the vest a more worn look.

The shirt received a similar treatment, but its shader uses the good old tileable cloth texture built into Maya. It started as a quick shader, but the more I adjusted it, the more I liked the result. It also has a small amount of subsurface scattering, which, I think, helped. As with the vest, I used two XGen fur passes: one across the fabric and another along the edges.

When it comes to grooming the Goblin, I started in ZBrush with FiberMesh to establish the initial look. It's very simple and fast once you get used to it. Then I moved to standard XGen and finally converted everything to XGen Interactive, which gives me much more control over individual hairs. I try to take advantage of the strengths of each system, and I've found that combining all three in this order gives me the best results.

For the eyelashes, I used standard XGen, while the peach fuzz was created entirely with XGen Interactive.

Lighting & Rendering

This was an interesting part of the process. With AI assistance, I developed a tool with a simple interface that lets me switch between my HDRI maps with a click. I can rotate each HDRI, adjust its exposure, and save my favorites along with their settings.

That makes it much easier to test materials under different lighting conditions. It has also sped up look development and helped me find lighting that suits the character. For the final render in Arnold, I usually recreate the qualities I like in the chosen HDRI using Area Lights. Then I add a personal touch – perhaps an extra rim light, a change in color, or an adjustment to the intensity of individual lights.

The final images were composited in Procreate, where I added the backgrounds and some post-production details like a very subtle painted atmosphere, bloom, and chromatic aberration, enough to add a little bit more realism to the image.

Conclusion

For years, my biggest challenge has been finding a workflow that feels comfortable and allows me to work efficiently. I want to finish projects while I'm still excited about them. I have two young children and a full-time job, so my personal creative time is precious.

That's why using AI to help develop tools that speed up my workflow makes sense to me. We're at a critical moment with this technology. My approach is to use it in ways that I consider ethical and that align with my own values. It can feel intimidating for artists, especially beginners. My advice is to use it to support your development as an artist and give yourself more time for creative work. For me, the artistic decisions and the hands-on process are still the heart of it.

Enrique Mateo-Sagasta, Senior Creature Modeler