ZBrushCentral

Project Black Betty - Crowdfunded Collectible Figure

Hi everyone,

Here it goes! Hope you don’t mind a large art dump about one project. Last year I partnered up with the great team at Painting Buddha to collaborate on creating an original collectible miniature that we eventually named Black Betty. We wanted to try out a new business model and format for this kind of thing. I won’t bore you with the details, but we managed to crowd fund the project in indiegogo with a bit more than double our target amount.

The aim was to make a really nice miniature with some customization options, a lot of detail to paint, and a very in-depth painting instructions that the Painting Buddha team would provide. We recently fulfilled the project and backers seem to be very happy with the figure in their hands. The last loose end we’re working on is the instruction video on how to paint Betty which is currently being recorded while Ben Komets of PB paints her.
Here’s the 2D concept. I designed Betty in 2D and made further adjustments to the concept as the 3D version evolved… eventually two monkeys showed up too.

BettyBamAlam_2DGraphic.jpg

Here’s a couple Keyshot renders of the completed sculpt. It took me a bit longer than most sculpts usually do, but it was worth all the trouble and headaches.

BettyOwnagedShot_01.jpg

BettyOwnagedShot_02.jpg

Ownage was in charge of printing her and casting the minis. This might have been the first time that they took care of casting the minis in house, they even equipped themselves with several magnifying lens lamps to handle the gig. Here’s a pic of the master print which stands slightly over 8cm.

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Back soon with more…

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BettyOwnagedShot_01.jpg

BettyOwnagedShot_02.jpg

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Here’s a couple detail shots of the sculpt in Zbrush. As a stretchgoal that we reached we made Betty more customizable by giving her a no-skirt option, alternate head, and alternate weapon too.

BettyAltConfig.jpg

BettyOriginalConfig.jpg

MonkeyScreenshots.jpg

I also made a mini comic for the backers. I hadn’t drawn sequential art in ages, but I wanted to kick my own ass into doing it. Took way longer than I would have liked, but eventually I completed it. I also used zbrush in the comic by creating rough versions of the ships that I then used as guides for drawing the ships in the panels. The cover was also done by taking a couple of quick polypainted renders of the model and painting over with more details. :slight_smile:

BettyComicPreview.jpg

You can view or download the .pdf fo the full minicomic here, hope youl like it: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/8207549/BettyComic.pdf

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BettyAltConfig.jpg

BettyOriginalConfig.jpg

1 Like

Looks great!

Awesome! Really liking the details, the fur on the monkeys must have taken a while to do…

excellent work

Derek Frenzo - thanks!
James W Cain - Glad you like the details.
johnchen - thanx man. :slight_smile:

Included in the digital version of the mini comic were a couple of making-of pages, nothing technical or too in-depth in this since it was meant for miniature hobbyists who don’t know much about Zb. I just wanted to give them a brief glimpse of how their figure came to be.

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Here’s another pic of the full unpainted kit, hopefully I’ll have some pics of the painted kit soon too:

BettyKit.jpg

While we were working on completing production the great guys at Junction 3D used Betty to show off the capabilities of their Solus 3D Printer. This version of her was printed at only 45mm (1.7 inches) and so much of the detail still held up. I was very impressed when I was later able to hold the piece and inspect it closely. You can find out more about the printer here:

http://www.junction3d.com/

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2015-SolusBetty_SM.jpg

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BettyKit.jpg

2015-07-15-17.50.35 ZS PMax_SM.jpg

2015-SolusBetty_SM.jpg

the print came out great, I have not heard of the Solus printer before.

Do you have any photos of the raw prints as they came out? I’m wondering how long the clean up process was?
thanks!

Thanks johnchen! I don’t have any pics of the raw print from the Solus, but perhaps if you contact the guys at junction they would have more info. According to this article the print took 3 hours: http://3dprint.com/82209/3d-printed-miniature-figure/

…adaptation! :sunglasses:

cheers for the reply, I’ll check it out. The Form 2 came out today, looks pretty cool. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ak4kgiSvgN8

good job!

Neat job!:+1:small_orange_diamond:+1:small_orange_diamond:+1:small_orange_diamond:+1:small_orange_diamond:+1:

Wow, thank you so much for the top row and the kind comments. I worked really hard on this project so it’s always nice to see it well received, again thanks! Wait till you see Betty painted, I’ll share some pics of that soon!

I was asked about my keyshot setup and prefs. Here it goes in a quick screenshot… Nothing really that fancy. I play around with materials and save new ones when I find something I like. I also try out the different HDR images and sometimes download new ones. Recently I’ve learned about lighting scenes with objects, so I’ll be trying that out soon too. I love Keyshot for Zbrush and the bridge, btw. Let me know if there are any questions on this.

-Hec

BettyKeyshotSettings.jpg

Wonderful results! Nice setup, both in sculpt and render.

Really liked your post and this makes me to do something new. Thanks.

MacroManJr - Thanx!

TonimaAkter - Glad you like it and that it makes you want to do something too. Go for it! :smiley:

The final collectors edition of the figure ended up packed full of goodies and memorabilia including 3 posters, a t-shirt, 10 art cards, tons of buttons and stickers, the mini comic and of course the figure.

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You can find the full review of the set by a backer here: http://thelilliworld.blogspot.fr/2015/09/black-betty-painting-buddha.html

During the funding campaign I approached one of my friends who draws comics (Rene Cordova) to collaborate on a holiday pin up card of Betty that he penciled and I colored, since the indiegogo campaign took place during the holidays.

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Here’s a couple more of the art cards we included in the package:

MonkeysPostCard.jpg

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It was a ton of work for myself and the Buddha team and it was very satisfying to complete the project to make our backers happy. The last thing we still owe our backers is now in the works and is looking very promising. The professionally painted version of Betty is being filmed for an instructional video, which is included as part of the collector’s set. Here’s a little preview of how that’s going:

BettyPaintWIP.jpg

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BettyPaintWIP.jpg

Awesome sculpt and 3dprint. So glad you posted this up. It’s great to see the workflow from virtual to real world object of desire, sitting on yer desktop.

Awesome project! congratulations!

I have a question, in the image of the 3d print with the coin, I see the model is without the platform,
did you use any special technique to make sure the center of gravity was in the correct place, so the model could stay in balance?

magicmodel-Thanks, glad you like it!

manuelf-Thanx! actually I didn’t really do anything specific other than make sure the pose looked balanced and correct. It’s possible that for those pics they put bits of gum under the feet. I have the figure in my office, but strangely haven’t tried stanting her up like that. I’ll check again, but no, no tricks or software were used for that. There’s the possibility of testing a dynamic simulation or other options, but I’m not technical enough for them. :stuck_out_tongue:

Here’s another WIP of painted Betty, looking forward to the Monkeys next.

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cool~~ beautiful work~