'ZBrush'

The second night I worked in XSI to get all the props done: a breast pump, milk bottle and pacifier. Again, those are really simple objects made from basic shapes. Nothing fancy (Fig.04).

The third night I used a premade rig in XSI and posed the low res character. I also tested the composition and lights. This way I was able to get a much better idea of how my final image would look. If you are familiar with my works, you might remember the two mighty kings. I took the same approach there, posing my characters and fixing the composition before I moved onto the detailing work (Fig.05). Personally I find this step is a must-have before moving onto further details.

Once I knew what I wanted to do with my final image, I went into ZBrush and made the details accordingly (Fig.06). The entire character was less than 1 million polys in ZBrush before decimation. It was really not that heavy. I made a 5% decimation on the original mesh and exported it out of ZBrush for later use. And that was it for night four.

On the fifth night, I imported the decimated mesh into XSI. I had no UV on any of my objects. All my shaders were simple shadings. They were just a bunch of blinn shaders with some reflections. I created four passes in XSI: Alpha, Depth, AO and a default render (Fig.07). The render results were not very good, but I wasn’t worried because I knew Photoshop would help me turn things around.