Character Project : Part 1

So we've been given our last professional brief before we move onto our FMPs.

This brief is to create a female warrior from either India, Africa, China or Japan. She can originate from any point in history up until the present day.

I see this brief as an opportunity to create one of my original FMP pitches, which was a medieval character in full battle gear, focusing on several material types and using a few techniques I researched over summer. Most notable the shells and fins technique used in the “Shadow of the Colossus”, which creates a realistic volume of fur . The only difference between my character FMP and this is that it has to be female and of an Asian ethnicity.

I looked into the Mongols, and really loved there style of light amour of leather pads with metal plates and all the different layers of clothing they use to keep warm – use of  fur, cotton, leather and sheepskin. The Mongolians are famous for their use of archery, so I wanted to include that into the design as well.
Below Is a moodboard I put together to help flesh out some concepts.

Moodboard

Focusing on the armour design and other items from the moodboard I created several designs to give me a stronger idea on what direction I wanted to head in.
I really like the 5th one (bottom right) as it has a strong silhouette with lots of interesting layers and materials.

Designs

Next I create an orthographic shot for a basic female figure. This was used to create the base mesh for sculpting. Creating the base mesh was an easy process. It was tricky to make sure it was made up of uniform quads throughout the whole mesh, especially the more complex areas such as the hands and face. For these areas I used the edge extrusion method as this gives me greater control of the edge loops.

I spent a bit longer than usual creating the base mesh, making sure it was anatomical correct and had a good edge flow. As the more accurate and better I make the basemesh now, the quicker it’ll be to sculpt an accurate highpoly and add items such as armour.

Basemesh

Using a handful of references I sculpted the character, as she was an archer in the army she had to be fit, so I sculpted a slightly muscular body. Certain muscles on the back (such as the traps, delts and teres) would be more defined as these are the muscles which work when you pull the string back on a bow.
Even though the only parts of this sculpt which would be visible on the final version was the face and hands I sculpted the entire model. I did this as its more practice (and practice makes perfect!) plus it gives me a better idea of how clothes/armour will sit on her, and how folds in the fabric would flow around her.

Highpoly

Next I will be adding all the other parts to the highpoly, such as the armour and clothes. Check back soon.