Introduction

Hello my name is Andrea Bruschi and I am an Italian self-taught artist. I am currently looking for a job so I appeal to the public to take advantage of this Making Of!

I don't pretend to teach anything with this article. It simply contains some of my thoughts about how to build a character and looks at ideas and comments that arose during the creation process.  Because almost everyone knows about workflows, techniques etc., I will try to break the mould by specifically focusing on developing a character. I think the article will be of most use to those who are taking their first artistic steps and trying to make their first characters, and I hope this will help you on your artistic path.

Concept

Marcus has been developed for Contagion, a survival horror game. I was given the specifications to follow by the concept artist Sam Ireland:- http://www.saffron66.com (Fig.01 – 02).

Modeling

The tris budget had been fixed to 9k and 1024px for texture resolution. Usually when I have to create a standard human character, I start to sculpt using a template to speed up the workflow. In this way the work becomes interesting and funny immediately, letting me leave the boring phase of translating the vertices for the future.

My preferred template is one made by Nick Zuccarello. It is downloadable from here: http://nickzucc.blogspot.com. The workflow that I prefer to follow is to sculpt every part of the model and then make a retopology with 3d Studio Max.

Here is the mesh template (Fig.03).