3004 Character Brief: The Prophet Pt. 1 - Concept Sketch and Modelling

My blog has always been a lacking aspect of my university work, so in order to properly rectify this, I've been reviewing the blog of a previous De Montfort Game Art student and alumnus, Nina Klos. I want to note that in the first post she made about her final major project, she used powerpoint slides to clearly present her ideas, goals and how she intended to use her time. I thought that this was a wonderfully clear and concise way to convey her initial thought processes, and I've chosen to borrow this idea for my own blog:

N.B.: Since my blog posts were also unreasonably long in comparison to the ideal brevity I've discovered from analysing Nina's blog-work, I also plan to try and be more brief and concise in describing my progress and project development.

The Concept Sketch/es:

I'm beginning the concept sketch in Photoshop with a screenshot of a base-model I made in my spare time after my Professional brief by combining a female upper body I made last year with the legs of the Firefighter Captain's base-model.

I want this religious archetype/prophet etc (I've not settled on a concise/descriptive title yet) to have no gender, no discernible biological sex. It would have designed its form to be as universally personable as it could.  As far as my personal perspective on theology is concerned, I think that a truly divine being wouldn't be male or female and would be elevated beyond such physiological categories, because that inherent sense of otherness that sprouts from that kind of image is easily synonymous with the uncanny and otherworldly.

Beginning of the mood-board in PureRef

The first step I made after adding the base-model was to trace my second initial sketch of the face from pt. 0 because I want to start the concept sketch on the best foot and that was my favourite sketch of the first few I did.

Beginning to sketch over my base character and photo-bashing the more complex elements to more efficiently rough out the forms

I think other than the head, the main focal point of this character is going to be the rib-cage. It's one of my favourite parts of the human body for its beauty in all 3 dimensions, but it will also show most strikingly that this is not a human being for its lack of vital organs and instead a divine construct (or perhaps more specifically a pseudo-divine construct).

After photo-bashing a radial cathedral window in the centre of the chest and roughly sketching some surrounding windows, I've conceded that it resembled Iron Man's 'arc reactor' too closely, so I'm going to consult my reference board again to find alternative shape language to use here.

I much prefer this arrangement of shapes as holes in the chest as opposed to the previous iteration. I also think that more transparent, clear glass or even holes as seen in my primary reference image would show this character's artificial nature to a greater degree.

An example of my use of the cathedral reference I've gathered; selecting a section of form language and warping it to my needs to sculpt a body part

A lot of my process of conceptualising this character has been choosing shape language and visual elements from the reference and fashioning them into varying areas of his body - photo-bashing. For example, I thought the deltoid areas would be accented well by inverted arches, and columns of relief work would outline his abdomen in a elegant way.

Screenshot of my ever-growing PureRef mood-board

To limit how noisy all the surface detail is going to be across this character's body, I think that using more simple shapes like columns and pillars to populate areas in between the more complex pieces is a sound decision. It'll also hopefully add some dynamics and contrast between these sections of the body.

Regarding the pillar elements, I think that it would be logical for this A.I. to have organised the shape language of cathedrals for its own form in a similar overall orientation to the original structures i.e. windows being in the middle, frescoes being higher up, columns being lower down etc. Developing that thought further, I think that the plinths or shelves of the pillars that meet the floor of the building would accent his heels nicely.

The thighs are an area I'm really struggling to choose imagery for, and I think that a front-facing concept sketch has brought me as far as it can, so I want to transition to a three-quarter angle - one with more depth - and see if that improves how well I can collage the character's body.

A Note on Deformation and Animation:

Because this character is formed entirely from architectural elements and shapes, I think it's important to state what my intentions are regarding how his mesh will deform, or not. When I began designing him, I supposed that since his appearance and body parts only resemble religious architecture, the highly sophisticated material he was actually made of was built to deform fluently and organically. I am however worried that this approach will just make his deformations look unnatural in a bad way, and not the way I want as it's not exactly obvious as a design element.

More specific reference for current photoshop concept sketch

I found it difficult to find the right architectural forms for the thigh and hip area, but I later recognised how the peak of the hips and the line of contouring down the thigh front can be described by a large and long arch shape. I used the left-most reference image above for this area, and I think I'll keep it as either a more blank stone surface inside the window-like inset and not turn it into an actual window hole, otherwise I think it'll only conflict with the surrounding holes as far as focal areas are concerned.

Avoiding 'Morph suit' and looking toward 'Automaton':

After discussing the current sculpt with my tutors, I've realised that the character is resembling too much of a skin-tight 'morph-suit' and not enough of an in-human construct. As for how I'm going to solve this, I think that adding more segmentation to some of the defining joints like the hips will put enough distance between my intended aesthetic and 'person in a suit'.

Robes:

I've been considering adding some sort of loose-fitting robe to the Prophet's design, something to elevate him to a more divine and important presence (though I think he'd wear them not quite as if they were clothes, since he has no need for them). He'd wear any kind of clothing in an uncanny way, since he's a construct. I also expect that this robe is not part of his form but actually something given to him by any followers he does eventually have in the setting.

Chest:

To make the main window-like holes in the rib-cage, I first traced my concept sketch of the front view in Blender with strings of vertices and filled in the faces. I then decided to import it into ZBrush because I felt it would lend more control to editing and working with a boolean mesh.

Modelling Stage (ZBrush and Blender):

Since lighting/light-play is going to potentially be a big aspect for this character, I'm frequently changing to Blender's material render mode to test different lighting arrangements from the available HDR's. I chose one that more closely resembles the lighting I've seen in reference for inside a sun-lit cathedral or basilica.

Chest:

Beginning with sculpting over a base-model in ZBrush, I poly-modelled the outline of the front rib-cage windows in Blender and import that model as a boolean mesh in ZBrush to create a cut-out in the chest. After proportionally editing and tweaking the overall shape of the boolean, I baked the mesh and imported it into Blender to retopologise. To create the interior chest cavity, I applied a solidify modifier to the model so the whole surface of the rib-cage is extruded inwards by about an inch.

Abdomen: 

For the initial stages of sculpting, I'm going to follow my unfinished concept sketch quite closely and once I get the more vague areas, I'm plan to experiment with sculpture and poly-modelling until I find the right pieces of cathedral shape language to incorporate.

Retopology in Blender as always. I'm using a solidify modifier for the ribcage area as I want it to be hollow, but I want to streamline the process of tweaking the mesh not applying said modifier just yet.

Calves:

Beginning in ZBrush as I did with the chest, I sculpted in the rough shapes of the cut-outs as I sketched in my concept, and retopologised them as separate meshes in Blender to join with the rest of the character's body one I've constructed it.

Because the pieces of this character are so intrinsically linked, I'm no longer modelling any one piece separately, and I'm now adding the greater whole bit by bit.

Hands and Lower Arms:

As sketched in the above concept and left reference image, I've modelled the Prophet's knuckles after the gilded mouths of church organ pipes. The fingers are segmented like pillar columns and the wrist is a fragmented likeness of a pillar foundation or plinth, while the purlicue (space between thumb and forefinger) is an echo of the arches around the arms.

I want these hands to stay slender and as androgynous as possible, but I want to avoid the fingers becoming too mechanical-looking and stay away from the typical robotic android aesthetic. As for why I chose to segment the fingers in the first place, I think it will add to the hands' silhouette, but it will also make the fingers deform better as it'll look very strange for architectural formations to bend as much as human digits normally do.

While I sketched the forearms as pretty basic columns in the concept stage, I wanted to sculpt the pillar forms in this area with human musculature in mind. So instead of a simple columnar form I wanted to loosely conform the individual pillar ribbing to the ribbons of muscle in the lower arm. I also think that in the texturing stage, I may ensure that some of the finer stonework doesn't line up perfectly. I think this will all invite nuance to the visual design and help imply how the prophet's tangible form is a very imperfect and abstract mixture of architectural forms.

Hips - Struggling with Finding the Right Forms to Build:

The hips have so far been the biggest hurdle in the modelling process. Regarding basic human anatomy, they're an area I often find the most unwieldy because they're a strange shape to conform any geometric form or group of geometric forms to in a cohesive way - all the wrong kinds of round. The first shapes I tried in the modelling resulted in a set of upper legs that looked overly chunky and ill-fitting of the body/silhouette I'm aiming for. He should be relatively slim and have proportions between male and female bodies of that weight class (the waist should be thin, the shoulders should be the widest, followed by the hips and the chest - the last two having the smallest range of width).

Hips - Breaking the Back of the Problem:

After struggling to solve the issue with poly-modelling, I realised I should try re-sculpting the hip area in ZBrush because I thought it would help me visually brainstorm on a 3D form more easily. Fortunately, I think I solved the problem faster this way. The new design for the hips is now more 3-dimensionally developed, and more importantly, conforms to an elegant hip shape and accents the fundamental forms of the joints.

Back:

Finding the shape language that was right for this final blank area was so difficult, I worried I'd never be able to settle on a pattern. After sculpting over 20 iterations, I developed an arrangement that involved echoing the shapes of the peripheral windows above, following the contours of the rib-cage, and finally transitioning down into a columnar set of ribbing that resembles pillars or spiralled decorations like the reference I initially tried pulling from.

Final Model:

Finally, the Prophet's model is done, at less than 35,000 triangles, which is just half the absolute budget given per character. The modelling took far, far too long considering how I aimed to ration my time between the three characters I plan to do. The stress was definitely mounting during the final stages of the modelling stage, as I felt stuck in this phase and like I couldn't progress until it was finished. I still intend to finish one character before moving onto the others, so I'm going to texture this one as quickly as I can within reason. The 3 dimensional detail that I've laboured over for what feels like ages should give me a head start in his textural quality and overall look, and the hi-poly sculpt I used to draft the back iterations is what I'll go back to in order to create a high detail normal map in substance painter.

Even if I finish the texturing soon, I'll have just 3 weeks each for the remaining characters, which is worrying me deeply. I work slowly with a perfectionist mindset that I find it uncomfortable on a primal level working fast or loosely. However, regarding the other 2 characters, I think that if I approach them as fast and loose projects from the beginning, it'll be smoother ride to the finish.