Sculpting Stylized Rocky Caricature In 3D

Introduction

I am a Digital Sculptor specializing in Character Art, with a particular focus and expertise in facial anatomy and deformation. My career in the film and TV industry began in 2006 at Rhythm and Hues on the movie Night at the Museum. Since then, I've had the privilege of contributing to major projects at studios like ImageMovers and Wētā FX, working on notable characters like Koba from Planet of the Apes and some hero creatures from The Hobbit, Superman from Man of Steel, and Tintin, among many others.

A significant portion of my career has also been dedicated to working with startups, developing cutting-edge technology for digital humans. This led to my involvement in projects like Michael Jackson's virtual performance and the iconic ABBA Voyage show. I was largely responsible for the facial likeness of Michael Jackson and the initial versions of the ABBA members and their facial expressions (The ABBA project went through many different phases and iterations, but I'm proud of being one of the earliest contributors). Also, through this experience, I was able to obtain some level of experience in every aspect of production, from character creation all the way to animation and lighting, etc.

For the past several years, I've worked at Blur Studio in LA,  and for the past few years, I've been the Facial Supervisor, in charge of overseeing the facial anatomy deformation at the studio. This includes working on really creative and rewarding shows such as Love, Death and Robots and Secret Level. While I am a supervisor, I make sure to stay hands-on with the sculpting process and actually do a large portion of the facial sculpting at the studio. I've worked on several LDR episodes, and some of the characters I'm most proud of include The Red Hot Chili Peppers as puppets, Jade Prime from Spider-Rose, and Greta from Beyond the Aquila Rift.

I am passionate about looking for ways to keep pushing the envelope when it comes to faces, whether it be realistic or stylized, such as the Rocky project.

The Rocky Caricature Project

My project was inspired by a lifelong admiration for the work of artist Sebastian Krüger. When I look at his paintings, I see an unparalleled understanding of facial anatomy and character. As a sculptor, I find his work profoundly inspiring. My goal was to translate his unique blend of hyperbole and accuracy into a three-dimensional sculpture.

To achieve this, I studied numerous reference images, including Krüger's original painting, to capture the specific angle, expression, and exaggerated features that define it. I also cross-referenced his artwork with real-life images from the film to confirm the anatomy. You can see a sample of the images here:

Modeling

My modeling workflow is a bit "old school". I prefer to start with a solid base mesh with precise topology. This saves time on retopology later and ensures the mesh deforms precisely, which is crucial for what I try to achieve.

The core of my sculpting process is done in Mudbox, and I use Maya for rendering. I love Mudbox's clean interface and straightforward layering system. For the Rocky caricature, I used a few simple brushes and custom skin alphas to build details, starting with the primary forms of the face and then adding secondary details like wrinkles and skin texture on different layers.

I also used simple tricks to save time, such as mirroring sculpting actions to quickly establish symmetry before breaking it down to create the exaggerated, asymmetrical look. I also created a brand new version of the face with a different expression: a raised-brow look I somewhat made up (was inspired by some images but had to make it work in transition to the expression of the painting). I tried to capture a "Krüger-esque" attitude with this additional expression (You can see this in the transition vid below). I also designed the body from scratch, basing it on real images of Sylvester Stallone and his iconic shorts, adding a level of detail and exaggeration that fit the original caricature's style.

Retopology & Texturing

For my workflow, I generally don't perform a full retopology process, as I start my projects with a pre-existing base mesh that has excellent topology and UVS. This approach saves a significant amount of time, as it already has proper edge flow for deformation and animation, allowing me to dive directly into the creative part: sculpting and texturing (I will, however, "unfold" the UVs a bit if needed).

My texturing workflow involves using Mudbox to paint textures directly onto the sculpt. This allows me to capture the subtle details I've already sculpted, such as pores and skin blemishes. I layer my textures as well, starting with a base skin tone and then adding layers for blemishes, veins, and different tones to achieve a highly detailed but still clean and painterly look.

Lighting, Rendering, & Lessons Learned

My lighting and rendering setup is deliberately simple to maintain control and efficiency. I primarily use Arnold area lights combined with a general HDR map to provide ambient light and reflections. I also add specific lights dedicated solely to the eye reflections and to fine-tune the specularity of the hair. My experience has shown me that no single shader behaves exactly as I want it to under a single light, so these targeted lights give me the flexibility to adjust specific elements independently without affecting the overall scene lighting (i.e., light linking is your friend).

Because the render is based on a painting, I applied some tricks in the shader to enhance certain areas, making them feel like a deliberate brush stroke. For example, I mixed an ambient occlusion with my general color map for it to feel like there were more deliberate lines drawn than you would see in real skin. I also created an SSS mask to "fake" darker areas and different shades of skin in different areas. Again, this is because my aim was to recreate the painting and not create "realistic" skin by any measure. You can see my pretty straightforward, but effective, shader network I created to achieve this using a basic standard Arnold surface shader:

For the hair, I used XGen's interactive grooming. I had to do a lot of manual sculpting and freezing to achieve the specific curls. I'm not an expert in grooming, so I'm not sure if there may have been an easier way to achieve this, but I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.

The project took me roughly 3-4 months to complete, as I was only working on it in my (quite limited) spare time. The main challenge was capturing the likeness of both Sylvester Stallone and Krüger's unique style simultaneously. It required a delicate balance of exaggeration and realism. I learned a lot about pushing anatomical forms to their limits while still maintaining a believable human structure.

What I enjoyed most was the sculpting phase itself: seeing Krüger's 2D painting come to life in three dimensions was incredibly rewarding. Figuring out the facial anatomy in a way that the exaggeration looked plausible and not forced was a major win and took quite a bit of refinement.

For aspiring artists, I recommend exploring tutorials on facial anatomy and lighting basics in Arnold. I'm honestly a bit out of touch these days with tutorials, as most of what I have learned was on the job, and from some of the amazing, talented people I have worked with over the years. Most importantly, I would say, is that I highly recommend good old-fashioned life drawing to improve overall visual art skills.

To see more of my work, follow me on ArtStation and Instagram.

Shraga Weiss, Digital Sculptor

Interview conducted by Amber Rutherford