Ubisoft Character Project #4

 

Continuing with my sculpt, I started adding clothes on top of my blockout, layering them on piece by piece. I started with the undershirt which was simple in terms of sculpting but it gave me a better idea of the proportions of my character. I had to alter the length of the torso because on my blockout it was a bit too long and it made the shirt look strange. I went over my blockout then and made minor alterations to it just so I had an easier time down the like.

 

Moving on I created the basis of the jacket and the scarf, getting a better idea of how the clothes layer on top of each other. I was worried that since I had a jacket with a big collar (and fur on the back) plus a scarf it’d look like there was too much going on in the mid section of the character. But upon sculpting the scarf to be a bit narrower than what as in the concept, and shaping the jacket to be bigger and puffier in the sleeves rather than the mid area, I think it won’t seem too cluttered.

 

I added in a base for the jacket collar as I couldn’t get the shape I wanted from the get go. I figured at least having a base will give me an idea of the final thing better and I can come back to it later. I also added a helmet blockout. In my concept I’d only really shown the captain with his helmet on but I’d planned to have a final character with a helmet and helmetless version. To see if the character held up with a helmet I add the simple blockout and would come back to it once again another time.

Ubisoft Character Project #3

 

For my captain character, I’d allocated my time towards spending a large portion of it towards the sculpting. Looking back on previous projects I know now that I’m always slowest at the beginning and then pick up momentum towards the end. In particular with sculpting I have a tendency to go back and forth on what I think looks good and sometimes actually restart portions of my sculpt. 

I work best in short distance goals so knowing there was a formative hand in was good because I knew I wanted to have at the very least the main sculpt done by that date (ideally it would be retopologized and unwrapped). From the start I planned ahead that I would spend 1 week researching and designing, 2 weeks sculpting and then 1 week for retopology and unwrapping. I thought this was my most realistic plan (unrealistically I’d spend just 1 week on the sculpt but I’m giving myself the buffer time).

 

To start off in ZBrush, I created a very basic blockout of the body that I would sculpt each clothing item over. Aside from that though I began sculpting the head as I had the clearest idea of how to approach that. Fairly standard sculpting, what I would consider the ‘easy’ part of my final model. I also sculpted the hair after completing the main face. This was done through the use of the 'curvetube' brush for the main hair clumps as well as the 'claybuildup' and 'damstandard' brush for additional details.

 

I’m glad I started with the head and took it to a somewhat completed state because I now how a reference point on my sculpt of what style I need to match throughout the rest of my sculpt. I’m going for a stylized character, something close to Fortnite and/or Valorant, so I have reference as to what kind of shapes to aim for but just to ensure that everything will match in the grand scheme of things, having the head as waypoint is nice.

Style reference

Ubisoft Charcter Project #2

 

Continuing my aircraft captain, I chose from my concept iterations one I thought would work well with further development added to it. I liked this one in particular because of the accents of bright red on the outfit and I also liked the hanging scarf. From these iterations I couldn’t see the retro style working well in 3D so I focused my attention to the 1940s style bunch and the 2^nd one piqued my interest most.

 

Alongside these iterations I sketched out some face shapes so I could get an idea of what kind of age and facial details I should include when I start sculpting. I’d thought up a small backstory for my character: he was a very well trained pilot but never anticipated his country going to war so started a small family- now, with a war in full swing, he has to leave his family behind and be on the frontline as a captain. 

With this backstory in mind I started leaning towards making him look younger but keeping his facial features quite sharp as if the war was aging him what with all the responsibility and trauma.

I created a more detailed concept of my captain, aiming to make his outfit seem practical and understand what kind of materials each clothing item would be. This would help me when sculpting as I could get a better grasp of what kind of folds I’d be working with and what kind of seams and patterns to add. I also created some coloured variations just to see what could look good apart form the colours I’d chosen in my first iteration.

Ubisoft Character Project #1

 

For my first 3^rd year project I decided to tackle the Ubisoft Character brief of creating a captain. Reading the brief, I started thinking up what kind of captain I thought would be interesting to make and how I could approach doing it. My immediate idea was to make a pirate captain but with some more thought I figured that might be a bit overdone- of course I’m not aiming to reinvent the wheel with this project but I still wanted my work to be somewhat intriguing.

With some more research and thinking I landed on the idea of creating an aircraft captain. My thoughts went to making a world war-esque pilot and I quite liked that idea. I thought that could make for some interesting designs with cool details scattered across the model so went ahead and started picking out references for this plan.

Most of my reference were world war/1940s style but I found some interesting steampunk images that I thought I could pick out details from and apply to my concepts.  I also found an amazing retro pilot concept that I thought might be interesting to iterate with for a bit to see if I could spin this aircraft captain into a different light.

 

With these references I started sketching out some quick concept iterations, pulling from the 1940s style and the retro style. I didn’t explore major details in these starting iterations, I just aimed to find and create interesting shapes. From these though, I thought the world war style captain had a better overall silhouette so decided to pursue that style- I couldn’t nail the retro look like how I’d initially imagined and couldn’t figure out how to rework it. There may be potential there but I’ll leave it for another project.