"marek" - development ../07.1
A blow-by-blow account of how Slide develops heavyweight characters
See also : "marek" - production ../07.2
Many client jobs fall under some form of non-disclosure agreement, so to keep our public portfolio fresh we regularly undertake internal studio projects. We recently followed-up on an idea we'd been chucking around for a while : a non-fantasy, non-pretty, nasty piece of work, along the lines of a gangster, hitman or old-school mafiosa.
After working various archetypes into concept sketches we decided to go for a contemporary feel, and so was born Marek : an East European boxer, past his prime and recently arrived in London to start his new career as a thug for hire. With some context in place, it was time to crack our knuckles and get on with the design.
An initial 2d concept stage was used to flesh out Marek's physique and proportions, and to give a flavour to the subsequent move into three dimensions. We then tested and evolved our design using rapid turn-around digital maquettes : we find that if the medium we are designing for is 3d it's a good idea to bring the design into a sculpting package as soon as we have a strong direction. Marek's digi-maq was created using a combination of ZBrush and Mudbox.
Our intention with the sculpt was to imbue Marek with a subtly-stylised and expressive physique, but give him enough structural and surface detail to seat him believably in a photo-real setting.
When sculpting was complete we created a lower-resolution poseable mesh, onto which we could transfer the sculpted detail. We always like to have our characters in good shape for animation - we see the sculpting phase as just one stage in the whole character development pipeline.
Finally, mentalray shaders were assembled using a combination of photo and hand-painted textures, and Marek approached completion. Now to test him out in an image - see "marek" - production ../07.2.
