GRIMM Creatures ("morph" time-lapse video added Pg 3)

[jBogh]

Hey everyone I'm finally getting around to posting up some of my character work for the NBC series GRIMM.
I'm a character artist at Hive-FX, based in Portland Oregon. www.hive-fx.com
We've been working on GRIMM from the start and are deep into Season 2 as I post this.
Specializing in the "morphing" that they use quite a bit for the show.

Starting from a basemesh, I first sculpt the actor or actress using provided reference views. The basemesh itself took a few iterations to get right. Due to deadlines, I rarely have the chance to create custom topology per character (Excluding the Dragon below). So I needed a male and a female I could sculpt into anything they threw at me. I'm now able to pretty successfully take human proportions and push them towards the monstrous fairly quickly. So it's essentially two finished Morph Targets per character. Point count and UV's have to stay the same in order for the blend to work. This allows our Animators (Matt Estes & Joel Hasse) to have full control over the morphing in Maya.

I morph them into creatures and monsters on a separate 3D layer. It feels similar to what a Prosthetic makeup artist might go through, except using the power and speed of digital sculpting. I'm usually given a piece of concept art from the very talented Jerad S. Marantz and Constantine Sekeris to work from. But lately the production has been using a lot of prosthetic makeup. So in the case of the Sabertooth I'm working from reference of the prosthetic work used on set. Prosthetic doubles can be tough but I'm usually pretty pleased with how they turn out.

After sculpting the model, it's sent to our Rigging TD (Tim Callaway), Hair artist (Eric Reed), and Surfacing in V-Ray. The textures are usually created by Karim Moussa (CG Lead) in Mari or in ZBrush by myself. It all depends on what the character needs and how much time either of us have. Texturing for me is like the icing on the cake, I love seeing a characters skin qualities come to life so I try and help as much as I can.
32 bit displacement and 4K textures are the usual suspects for getting all the ZBrush details down the pipeline efficiently.
We usually have ~3 weeks per episode, sometimes less, but depending on the volume of shots it can get pretty crazy. Often overlapping episodes simultaneously.
There has been some long nights in the name of GRIMM that's for sure, but I feel really fortunate to get to work with such a cool group of artists all day, doing what I enjoy most.



The last image is a direct result of purchasing Paul Gaboury's book ZBrush Professional Tips and Techniques. The comparison is between SkinShade4 at default with basic lighting on the Left, on the Right is multiple quad-shaders coming together with BPR, Material Blend Radius turned to atleast 15, a studio Lightcap setup built inside of Zbrush without any HDRI sourcing, and finally BPR Filters.
In fact all the images above are straight out of ZBrush 4r3/r4 BPR. Photoshop was only used to frame and bug.

Here's a timelapse I managed to capture of the full morphing process, I just wish I recorded the actor sculpt before hand as well as the Final ZBrush look-dev to get the images above.
Marnissier the Sabertooth assassin is one of my favorite characters to date!





A special thanks to the ZBC community!!
This place has allowed me to be a self taught ZBrush artist, constantly growing from the amount of raw awesomeness posted on these boards.
I look forward to the future of this community and the new developments Pixologic is sure to dish out!
When I get some free time again I will post up more renders.
Thanks for watching!

www.hive-fx.com

[TimCallaway]

Nice work as always man!

[--E--]

Amazing work Jerod!

[Fallencomrade2008]

Lookin good Jerod. I for one would love to know how much of the characters creative interpretation was yours or if you where tasked to create from existing concept art.

[jBogh]

Thanks guys, I really appreciate it!

@Fallencomrade2008
It really varies a lot from character to character. For example for the Dragon I was given a nice piece of concept art to reference as I went.
Usually a 3 Quarter view or Front, never both though. When I have a concept to work from I'm usually let off the leash a bit and it's my job to interpret how to best incorporate the concept design on top of an existing actors face. The concepts are rarely using the actor's proportions to build from.

Sometimes requiring the human proportions to shine through, and sometimes completely changing them into monster features.
I have to bounce between workflows a lot because I might be going off a concept for one character, and another character in the same episode might have full on Prosthetic makeup applied that I have to match digitally.
I like working from a concept a lot, it's awesome to see something come to life in 3D.
But working from a prosthetic reference can be pretty cool too.
I always try and find areas to improve upon since the Digital version will be used for all the close-ups and any Lip-syncing shots.

The last example would be like Captain Renard's hand renders at the bottom. That was just a go for it kind of scenario where I was briefed on what they were after but wasn't provided any specific reference.
Hope that's clear enough..

[runcher]

Very Good!!!!