Introduction

"Punk” is a character inspired from one of the models on 3d.sk. The intention was to make a character aesthetically pleasing, which stood out from the rest and had a unique design. After some research I found out that there were not many models of punk type characters, so I decided to go in that direction.

In this article, I will try to explain the process I followed to create the character. I collected as many punk references as possible from the internet and started the modeling process. My base mesh was Nick Zuccarello's free ztool model available from his blogspot: http://nickzucc.blogspot.com/. This base mesh is constructed from quads and is relatively dense, so it serves as a good starting point

My work speed is much faster in ZBrush than it is in 3ds Max, so I prefer doing most of my organic modeling in ZBrush (Fig.01).

Sculpting

One of the most interesting parts of character modeling is sculpting. To flesh out a character I use the Clay brush or the Claytubes brush most of the time. Somehow, I cannot get around using the Standard brush; it seems to be destructive in a certain way and if used with too much depth, it tends to take the control away from the artist. The Claytubes brush, on the other hand, has an additive way of adding detail. It adds flat details to a surface, so it works like traditional media.

During sculpting, the most important thing to do in my opinion is to keep turning the model and viewing it from all directions. This is particularly important during the fleshing out process because this is where the silhouette and proportions of the character are resolved. Once I was happy with the detail in the character, and its overall proportions, I went on to model the character's clothes (Fig.02).

Clothing

I created a mask for the vest, and used the Extract option under the Subtool palette to create a new subtool. I retopologized the extracted subtool to get a desired polyflow, deleted higher subd levels and started to sculpt it into a vest. I use the lazy mouse, along with the gravity feature under the brush settings, to make a fold flow with gravity (Fig.03).

Pants and Shoes

I created the pants in the same way, extracting, retopologizing and sculpting. The only major additions for the pants were the tears. The tears were easy to sculpt. I made Selection masks for the tears, pushed them inwards (the body will be viewed over it) and used the Snake Hook brush for the strands.

The shoes were simple because the pants covered most of them. I went for a worn out look for the shoes, using alphas to make it look rough (Fig.04 – 05).