Hi everyone. My name is Jeet and I am a character artist. This is my chosen concept for taking part in the Character Design (Realistic). Found the image below on Artstation. It is drawn by George REDReev.


I generated a couple of inspirational images in Leonardo AI using this prompt. These will serve as an inspiration for achieving a cinematic photorealistic render.

Ultra 4K realistic photo of a unbearably beautiful girl's face who is a dragon warrior, stunning makeup and lips, with a crying in pain expression, half of the face, hair and upper body burnt by the dragon's fire, 20 years old, natural eyes and full mouth, looking right through the sky, light on the up side of the face with a warm fire light.

These were the ones I liked:



And a couple of others using this prompt:

gorgeous female warrior full body view from head to toe, medieval lower body fabric clothing, no metallic armor all hard leather armor, torn and tattered, knee high long leather boots, waist band, metal and leather bracers on hand

And I gathered a couple of reference images for the different parts of the main concept from pinterest. And I've compiled a mood board for the same.

Some progress on the face and body proportions. Used CC4's morph sliders and Zbrush GoZ functionality to get the desired shape. Never thought shaping a head could be so non-destructive with the morph sliders and so accurate and precise with Zbrush's brushes when the primary shapes have been dialed in.

Aiming for the faces on the side of the main concept art for the likeness and overall shape. They aren't the same person as they are AI generated so not going for 1-to-1 likeness but those will heavily guide the face shape and personality. Will be keeping the same hair style and burnt skin look from the concept.
And here's the overall body shape which I tweaked to match the main concept in terms of proportions and body fat.

Simulated the gambeson (under armor padding clothing) in marvelous designer. Quite happy with the primary folds and clothing pattern. Will be using this as a starting point to detail in ZBrush and add other leather and armor pieces on top.

Nice! Keep sharing and good luck!

Retopologized the clothing first and then tore down the clothing from her shoulder and designed in what pattern should the burnt cloth should look like. Did some quick UVs to bring them to ZBrush where I'll be transferring the details from the high res MD sims.
And some tests with how the tatttered gambeson material would look like. I spent a bit of time researching how the inner filling looks like and how I can replicate that in CG. It's a combination of a tilable waste wool fluff material I made in Substance Painter and some V-ray fur. I think it looks convincing enough. Will see if a simple V-ray fur would do or I need a dedicated groom for the wool fluff. The frayed edges of the cloth will definitely need a dedicated groom to have more control over them.

It's been a few weeks and I did not post any updates, but I finally got a productive weekend before a few days. Sketched some armor pieces and shoes in Zbrush and retopoed them in Maya. Most of the meshes on the warrior have been done (except for some small doodads around the main meshes).

Shoulder Plates:



Forearm Bracers:



Shoes:




And here's the full body view where these parts will go.

Some more update. Wrapped the free sample scan available on 3d scan store here and transferred the high res skin detail and texture maps to the base CC head that I've been using.
Detailed the head in Zbrush and fixed the seam where the scan ended and the CC details that were transferred with GoZ plus addition to CC4. 

GoZ plus created the overall skin details to an acceptable level in most places, but there were quite harsh lines on the seams smoothed and filled those with nearby details with the Xtractor brush in Zbrush. Blended the scan with the CC texture and matched the colors to look seamless in Substance Painter.
Did some RnD on creating the burnt skin with blisters and boils. Used the handy surface noise in ZBrush with some manual sculpting and alphas for tertiary details. Quite happy with the workflow, going to do the same on her body and face next.

Some more update. First pass on clothing sculpt, still lots of damage/wear and tear need to be added.

Detailed the skin with the burn marks. Created with a combination of hand painted mask and surface noise.

Looking gnarly! can't wait to see the end product!

Thanks! I'm excited to see your character as well, I would have never dared to tackle such a detailed piece as you did especially in such a limited duration of time.