Making Of 'Annie'

Introduction

Hi, my name is Florian Falcucci and I am a CG graphic artist who's been living in Paris for the last year. For this character, the idea was to create a character in a cartoon style with a good charisma. A strong, successful woman who does not let itself be pushed around. And I love the period of the early 1920's-30's American aviation, with Amelia Eckhart, so that's what I decided to go with. The objective was to create an illustration with a single character, discover new methods and find the best workflow. I suppose parts of my workflow are not very classical, but they worked for me.

References / Modeling

I'm not a designer, so I gathered together a lot of references for creating this character (Fig.01). I know how the character was going to be built and the style I would give her, but I began the modeling using classic references to help with the proportions and I transformed this base into my final character.

Fig. 01_refrence

Fig. 01_refrence



I modeled the character in 3ds Max in a neutral pose so that I would have a fast setup for the posing (Fig.02). I don't like modeling the pose directly in Max because it's then difficult to step back and correct any errors that show up later in the creation process. 

Fig. 02_low_poly_model

Fig. 02_low_poly_model

I prefer to begin with the head because it's the most important part of a characters; it's what we look at first. The rest of the body comes naturally.

I added some base colors to the mesh to give me ideas for the final character (Fig.03). The accessories were built to give extra details and enrich the character.

Fig. 03_colour_blocking

Fig. 03_colour_blocking

Posing / ZBrushing

Okay so at this point I had a good base for the character. Before moving on to posing, I unwrapped the UVs (Fig.04). The body/face was separate from the other elements, the same as the accessories. As I wasn't going to use the final image for animation, I decided to separate the parts to have the best quality rendering possible.

Fig. 04_head_map

Fig. 04_head_map

For the posing I used a script in Maya: AbAutorig. It's very easy to use and the posing is done in one afternoon, with a classic skinning. I broke the setup when the posing was definitive and I refined small parts of the model (Fig.05).

Fig. 05_model

Fig. 05_model



This character gave me the opportunity to discover ZBrush. I wanted to add more details to the pants and jacket, and ZBrush was the best solution to get the little creases. I didn't want a realistic effect, but just enough to give more consistency. I exported the ZBrushing in a .TIFF file, for use as a displacement map. The maps were 4096 resolution and I exported the low poly mesh from ZBrush to get a mesh more suitable for displacement. The modifier Displace from Max worked perfectly for this job (Fig.06).

Fig. 06_model_pose

Fig. 06_model_pose

Texturing

Now I had the principal elements, I began texturing. Because the character wasn't going to be used in an animation, I was able to use big, multiple textures and get some great details. I separated the body (Fig.07), the pants (Fig.08), the jacket (Fig.09), the glasses and the other elements like buttons, pockets and the belt. I baked the parts of my character with the Render to Texture option. It is very useful for providing details in the textures. For this I baked an Occlusion, which I then added to my .PSD files. This gives the indications of shadows and the distance between elements.

Fig. 07_uvmap_painted

Fig. 07_uvmap_painted

Fig. 08_trousers_uv_map

Fig. 08_trousers_uv_map

Fig. 09_jacket_uv_map

Fig. 09_jacket_uv_map

Shading

For simple organization, I used a Multi-Subobject for the texturing (Fig.10).

Fig. 10_texture_materials

Fig. 10_texture_materials

The face was very simple (Fig.11). It is the base of painting with degraded, and some details like freckles. I began to create the shade of eyes with a ramp, but it was simpler to create a .tga file and it allowed me to add more details. The eyes are maybe the most important in the character; it is the first part that we look at.

Fig. 11_head

Fig. 11_head

The jacket was more difficult (Fig.12). I wanted the best way to render a leather style, but the jacket still had to feel like it was worn. I mixed different textures together, using photographs, to give interesting shading and with the displacement, "feel the leather". I used the same shader for elements like the pocket and belt, but with a slight difference in color to inject details.

Fig. 12_leather_jacket_effect

Fig. 12_leather_jacket_effect

The pants were simple (Fig.13). In my references, the pants of the aviator were just fabric and seams. The baking of the mesh allowed me to give a degraded feel. I was not decided on the color of the pants at this point. As you can see in Fig.13, I tried out different color passes before I found that worked - a classical color, but also one that fitted with the color of the jacket.

Fig. 13_pose

Fig. 13_pose

Lighting

The lighting was very simple (Fig.14). I used two principal V-Ray lights, one in front and one to the right, and a rim light to the left. I added another light on top to create dense shadows and the same for the back of the character. I also added two spots to create the specular of the eyes, with an exclude. The shadows are in normal resolution, with no particular option selected.

Fig. 14_lighting

Fig. 14_lighting

Render / Compositing

I used V-Ray for the render, but it was very simple. I just added more antialiasing, activated the GI and the result was very convincing. I rendered some passes for the compositing Fig.15: a pass of GI, Occlusion, Lighting, Shadows, Specular and a cache for works the background. The beauty pass was the final pass and I used it in the compositing stage to add more details.

Fig. 15_beauty_occlusion_passes

Fig. 15_beauty_occlusion_passes


The compositing was done in Photoshop, and I rendered the background too with the shadow of the character. I made the background separately and got a good result (Fig.16).

Fig. 16_background

Fig. 16_background

After this I added the passes of my character (Fig.17). I modified the contrast and saturation, the color correction and others parameters to achieve the final result (Fig.18).

Fig. 17_composition

Fig. 17_composition

Fig. 18

Conclusion

Creating this character was a good experience. I'm sure I could create another, similar character more quickly now, but with pro work to do at the same time, it is not easy. But I will continue to do personal projects because I think it's important to have the possibility there.

If you have any questions, don't hesitate to email me. Thanks for reading!

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