Stranger Things fan art:

Character Modelling:

As I aspire to become a Character Artist, I used the summer holidays as an opportunity to start learning about modelling characters and human anatomy.

When reading ‘d’artiste Character Modeling 2: Digital Artists Masterclass’ (2010), a section by Timur “Taron” Baysal introduced me to the idea of box modelling, whereby I begin creating my character’s face with a cube. With this in mind, I then searched for a tutorial on YouTube, and would go on to use the following demonstration to walk me through modelling a face:

Having found a tutorial, I then needed to find reference images of a face. To do this, I went to 3d.sk and was able to download a facial profile from the front and side. Next, I took these images into Photoshop and made sure they were aligned before taking them into Maya.

After adding more detail to my head sculpt in Mudbox, I then created the UVs, ready for texturing in Substance Painter.

Texturing

With regards to texturing my model, I wanted to achieve a ‘Telltale’ game aesthetic, and so looked at the following references to try and gain an understanding of how to approach designing my textures:

‘Walking Dead: Michonne – hand painted diffuse maps on characters typically included heavily painted lighting information, such as sharp and hot specular highlights on noses and lips’ – Farhan Noor, Technical Artist