Animation Practice: Evaluation

For this project we were tasked with sculpting a character of our own design in ZBrush, from the concept stages up till rendering, documenting each step. The character we design should have a story and design that suggest they’re an anti-hero, a character who, while not a villain, exhibits negative or immoral traits or actions that makes them less heroic than a standard hero. We were also tasked for creating a prop for our characters that is relevant to their story or character.

I began by researching what an anti-hero is and using what I learned to factor into my designs for the character designs I created. Taking inspiration from numerous notable anti-hero characters in film and video games, I came up with a number of official concepts. Initially I spent more time than I would have liked trying to design a character that actually embodies the qualities of an anti-hero, so a lot of time was spent thinking of concepts that eventually would go unused.

 After designing a futuristic Sci-Fi smuggler, I decided to try other designs and eventually ended up with a character I believe to be far more interesting, a post-apocalyptic survivor. While I did like the concept of my original character, he was an anti-hero in his job only and in no other aspects, so I thought I should focus on creating a character who more closely exhibits those traits.

I made the choice to involve Autodesk Maya in the workflow, using it to create the base meshes for several parts of the sculpt. Using Maya for this purpose is considered industry-standard for hard surface modelling and game character creation and as such I saw this project as a chance to experiment and learn how to use both programs in the character sculpting workflow to increase efficiency and allow for the easier creation of hard-surface geometry.

This method would prove invaluable for modelling the character’s prop, a shotgun, and her numerous accessories such as belt buckle, boots, gloves and other items of clothing. Using this method was a learning experience and being able to use it and traditional ZBrush sculpting methods not only taught me how to use the program itself, but also gave me more experience modelling organic and hard-surface geometry and taught how the pipeline between Maya and ZBrush worked. I believe that ultimately this was a good decision as I learned a lot more through this process and learned how to overcome challenges that came about.

In conclusion, I am mostly happy with how this coursework turned out. I believe I managed to create a model of high quality and learned an immense amount about ZBrush and sculpting in the process while also practicing Maya modelling techniques. Had I managed my time more effectively I believe I could have made a more impressive model and character that further embodies the qualities of an anti-hero, as I feel like my final model doesn’t represent the concept of an anti-hero as much as I had wished it would. I would have also spent more time learning some of the many useful features of ZBrush, such as polygroups, that ultimately made the process so much easier, but could have saved a significantly saved time if I was aware of them when I was initially modelling the character. I believe the model itself could still be improved significantly and I made numerous mistakes, such as modelling the character with arms at the side and legs straight down, instead of in an A-Pose or a T-Pose, that ultimately made the process harder and more time consuming than it needed to be.

If I could try this project again I would use my time more efficiently, document my work more often, and ensure I don’t make the same mistakes I made this time that hindered me. I would have also made sure to spend more time in ZBrush and experimenting with the many tools available, as I often relied on Maya for creating geometry I couldn’t create as effectively in ZBrush at my current level of knowledge of the software. I would ensure I spend as much time as suitable to learn the program and it’s many systems to ensure I don’t need to rely on Maya as much and consequently allow me to spend as much time as possible in ZBrush, sculpting, learning and gaining more experience with the software.