Introduction

This is my little sad alien and I want to share with you the story of how he was born. It was in 2008, when I was taking online classes with the famous Alex Oliver. One evening I didn't have any homework from him, but I wanted to sculpt anyway. I found a great concept by Carlos Huante (Fig.01 – Character Design © Sony Pictures) and with that my journey began.

Sketching

I started modeling in ZBrush (version 3 at that time, I think), from a simple sphere. It was a very rough and quick model, but in that moment I decided that I want to create a scene with him in it.

You can see the rough model in Fig.02. He seems a little bit angry at this point, but he developed into a very sad character during the creation process.


I used a standard approach, with the Clay and Standard brushes. This model took me about 30 minutes, and then I put it to one side for a few months. When I came back I started working on his body, starting with a very basic base mesh (Fig.03).



From that point on, I continued with this workflow of using simple base meshes or DynaMesh to create rough shapes and forms as it allowed me to quickly get my ideas onto the screen. When you're about halfway to a final model, and you have the proportions and major details locked in, you should retopologize the model even more and if needed, make it ready for rigging. You can see my final model in Fig.04 and how the cloth has been extracted from the body mesh.