'Phoenix Ikki' character from Saint Seiya made in June 2020.
'Los Caballeros del zodíaco' as we know it in Argentina, was one of many tv shows from my childhood that influenced me a lot!
Particularly 'Phoenix Ikki' is the character that I admire the most from the bronze saints.
I also love 'Gemini Saga' from the golden saints, but that's a different story.
Long story short, I've heard about a contest called 'II Prizes to the talent' organized by EVAD (Málaga, Spain) where the prize was a fully supported scholarship for their Master in '3D Modelling and Animation for Video games'
valued in €6.000! 💶😱
I wanted to study the Master but it was a little risky for me to invest that much money (specially if you don't even have it 🤣)
But the thing is that... I've never sculpted a character before, and to be honest I didn't had much experience modelling that kind of organic shapes since I'm coming from technical modelling for products... but with the start of the pandemic I've wanted to try something different.
so.. why not??
I jumped into Blender and made this project, where I had to learn not only the software tools, UI layouts and viewports, modelling techniques, modifiers, but also the workflow used in the game industry in a very short time of period of just a few weeks.
🏅 I am proud to mention that it was elected one of the five (5) finalists but unfortunately I didn't win the scholarship. 🏅
I've definitely learned a lot in the process!
Image: Final Character presentation with turn around views.
PHOENIX IKKI - Modeling process
Here's a little bit of the character's design process:
I've made the 'Medium-fidelity' model, afterwards I've applied all the modifiers for the High poly model.
I had some issues with the baking process... so I couldn't bake normal and AO (Ambient Occlusion) maps from the high mesh to the low mesh, so basically it's rendered in the high poly model.
Body: Skin modifier, Blender sculpt tools. Based on human body references.
Armor: Solidify, modifiers with mirror.
Armor Bends: Lattice modifiers.
Phoenix tails: Array modifiers with custom ends.
Textured: Substance Painter
Materials: I've struggled with the low-high baking, so I had some issues applying smart materials and filters, therefore I had to tweak a little bit of everything inside basic materials. Based on gold, aluminum, cloth and skin materials.
Render: Marmoset Toolbag 3. I've played around with cameras, lights, sharpen strength, among other settings.
Image: I've put some reference images on the background and scaled them 1:1 to have a "real proportion" feeling. Then I made a base mesh with the skin modifier tool in order to create the body base.
Image: For this step I've started to sculpt with the mirror in the X axis turned on. Here I used mostly basic brushes like inflate and Dyntopo turned on.
Image: Hands, made out of metaballs technique and then sculpted over the mesh.
Image: Hair distribution, made with a certain shape that would follow a path (Shape+NurbsPath). Followed a tutorial named "Easiest way to create hair in blender - 5 minute Tutorial" 😂 and it worked.
Image: Body and clothes over a platform.
Image: Body retopology.
Image: Shoulder modeling. With a picture reference on the side.
Image: Armor modeling. In the top left we can see the lattice modifier in the character's chest.
Image: Hair distribution, made with a certain shape that would follow a path (Shape+NurbsPath).
Image: UV Unwrapping. Yes, I have no ide what I'm doing... 👀
Image: Trying to rig the body, But I had problems baking the high-poly model with the low-poly model and the rig wouldn't move the heavy mesh.. and I didn't had much more time plus it wasn't mandatory to rig it, so I left it like that.
You can visit more of this project in my ArtStationsite.
