'ZBrush'

After this, I quickly started needing a lot more geometry to work with because of my quick base mesh and its poor topology. So I divided the mesh three times and started to define a bit more than just the main shape/silhouette of the character, meaning the bone structure and some main muscles, as well facial features.

When you’re creating some sort of being, I find it’s very important to make sure it has some recognizable human-like features. Otherwise, people won’t be able to relate to your character.

So I started establishing some of those features for my character, including the eye cavity position, the shape of the “nose” and the location of the ears. At this time I was assuming that, like the Axolotl Salamander, it would be an amphibian creature to justify some of its humanized traces, like the nostrils and lips.

After dividing the mesh this much I started using some different tools like the Clay, Clay Tubes and Standard brushes with some tweaks on the Modifiers slider (Fig.08 – 09).

One more division and I started adding some more detail. At this point I had 3.5 million ActivePoints and started using some of the most basic circular alphas with the Standard brush to get some smooth lines (Fig.10 – 11).

I also added some spheres to sculpt one of the eyes and its membranes/eyelids. After finishing one of the eyes I just used the Subtool Master to mirror the other eye. As the character was getting a sad/angry look, I increased its lines and its mood a bit to make it more empathic and a bit more feminine (Fig.12 – 13).

As strange as it may seem, at this point I decided to jump into posing to see if the sculpt was expressing what I intended it to be or if I needed to enhance some of its features in order to get there.