I decided on this badass concept by Stepan Alekseev for my Digital Sculpting class in Term 3 - it was a huge risk for me as a total Zbrush noob at the time, but I pulled through in the end. However, when I decided to develop the initial sculpt into a full render months later, I was haunted by multiple errors of my past inexperience. Whether it was cleaning up errors in form, organization, topology, or UVs, I can truly say that sticking with this project became a labor of love.
Nonetheless, I challenged myself to push this piece aesthetically as far as I could, even given its limitations. This actually pushed me to put a heavier focus on lighting and compositing in Nuke, which has really shaped my workflow since. This piece was textured in Mari and Substance Painter, rendered in Vray, and composited in Nuke.
Here you can see multiple stages of progression - Lighting was a big part of telling the story. I started off staying more faithful to the atmosphere of the 2D concept, but ended up putting my own spin on him. Don't be fooled by his appearance, he's actually a friendly dude who loves hugs.
