I still don't really have a title for this piece as I didn't really plan anything. Usually when I'm making characters I have the idea first and then I go about making it, but with this project it was more of a way of me practising hard surface techniques in Zbrush and I'll explain how I got to this end result.
I'd be watching an artist on youtube and found his concepting workflow interesting, He'd concept the rough shapes and design of his character in zbrush using the dynamesh feature, render the scene and then bring the image into photshop, then paint the environment around the render. I thought this was a really neat way to do it and something I never tried. So this is how this project came to be, I didn't want to start with any plan or design.
So as you can see below is the zbrush sculpt, I kept the sculpting to a minimum, I wanted to leave detailing out of it to save time as I was just using this as a practise. To begin with I started with the head using a dynameshed sphere and just pulled the shape around to until I got something interesting, then carved heavily into it with the hpolish and Trim dynamic brushes. These brushes are great for hard surface work and you can get a lot of interesting shapes that you wouldn't otherwise think of.
I continued this process to create the rest of the armour, using the clip curve brush to trim the shapes into harder looking panels. Once all the big shapes were in place it was just a matter of masking areas and bevelling, inflating, sculpting pieces away etc, to add some extra detail to the armour.
With the sculpt complete I exported the render and began to paint in photoshop. As I was sculpting this I was thinking of a scifi setting, I wanted something exciting, interesting lighting etc. So I ended up seeing this character as like a colonist/scientist and he's studying this new planet. So to give it more interest and mood, as well as reason for the heavy armoured suit, the world would have to be very hostile.
With that in mind I painting rough sharpe rough shapes behind him, not spending to much time on any particular area. Just painting with a flat grey to create a bit of skyline and outline to the background. This stage I always keep really rough, you don't want to spend 2 hours on a rock and then find that it just doesnt work or looks out of place. I pretty much created the whole background in greyscale first before I considered any colour, and I revisited the greyscale layer to edit the lighting later on.
When it came to the colour I thought about painting the landscape a purplish colour but it just clashed with the lava explosions to much, so I scraped the idea and just went for a more hellish theme for the background as the character in the foreground is in cooler colours to make a nice contrast.
So this is how the final image came out, I was pretty pleased with the final result, as I started with no idea where I was going and got to this. I like the workflow of roughing something out in Zbrush because you can set up the lighting and just quickly paint on top if you wish to change any part of it. It also gives you a good starting point for colour and the direction of the light when you get to painting.
Its certainly a quick and effective way of starting concepts and if you have used zbrush before then I would definitely recommend it if you are having a hard time coming up with ideas,
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