Hi there my dear reader and fellow artist, if you’re here, you probably love art as much as I do. In a previous post, I talked a bit about my process for creating creatures for board games, and in this post, I’d like to expand a little more on that topic. If you haven’t seen the previous post about this subject, check out Creature creation process.
After receiving the briefing, I recommend — for any kind of creation you do, even if you don’t yet have a clear idea of what you want to explore — that you have a briefing and some references to guide your work. I usually like to start with extremely quick composition sketches to get a sense of how much space the character will occupy in the frame and what kind of pose it will have (which brings a certain personality to your creature). This initial phase is just a sketch to help you generate ideas — it’s not something you send to clients.
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From these initial ideas, I develop the thumbnails that will be presented to the client. If it’s a personal project, take the opportunity to explore those ideas through thumbnails. I like to work in this stage using only values, and I also like to suggest some design and lighting elements when necessary.
Once I have the composition figured out, if the creature has humanoid features, I create a basemesh using Daz Studio and export the OBJ file to ZBrush. In ZBrush, I have more freedom to modify and sculpt over that pose. I also tend to use the Transpose Mesh tool to make the posture more natural and fluid — something I find a bit limited in Daz.
From this base, I start sculpting.
Usually, since it’s for an illustration, I only sculpt the details and shapes that will be visible in the 2D image.
It’s also important to define the camera that will be used and save it early on.
After finishing the 3D base in ZBrush, I use the bridge to KeyShot. The first thing I do in KeyShot is set up the camera, then I start adding materials. It’s important to keep everything that will use different materials on separate SubTools in ZBrush — for example, skin separated from fabric, and fabric separated from metal.
After applying the materials,
I use an HDRI for lighting. I don’t like using the default ones that come with the software, so I download new HDRIs from Poly Haven.
Finally, I render the 3D base to use it for the illustration, and then I move to Photoshop to do a paintover on top of it.
