ZBrushCentral

CRYart - Toys, Miniatures and Games

Hey guys! I’m Tom Lishman (CRYart) , long-time member of ZBrush central (mostly lurking!) and I thought I would share with everyone some work I’ve been doing for both clients and in my own time!

A little about myself: I’m a self taught ZBrush artist from the United Kingdom. My first freelance break was through these very forums when I received a PM from Michael Gulen from McFarlane Toys! He saw some of my personal character work and asked if I was interested in developing for toys, and as a result I was thrown into the toys and miniature industry!

https://www.facebook.com/cryart.co.uk/

https://www.artstation.com/artist/tlishman

First up -

Fantasy Flight Games

One of my previous clients had put me in contact with one of the art directors at Fantasy Flight Games. Over the past year I have been contracted to sculpt various miniatures for some of their boardgames! Entirely sculpted within ZBrush and rendered in Keyshot. These are a few I’m allowed to show!

Because these will be printed and cast in plastic, the edges and designs for the characters have to be thick, big and bulky so details withstand production. Hard edges often get softened by the end result, so extra depth and extra definition helps make these figures pop!

Final figures are edited both by myself and the team at Fantasy Flight, hence the differences between renders and photos of the final figure!

DarkMinotaur.jpgdm1.jpgJonas.jpganr.jpgimpas.jpg

Infamy Miniatures

For the past two years I’ve had the amazing chance to work with a chap called James Griffiths on his miniature line ‘Infamy Miniatures’ These were sculpted for 32mm!

http://www.infamyminiatures.com/

in3.jpginfhom.jpginfprof.jpgthomas-lishman-covo.jpgthomas-lishman-osc1.jpgthomas-lishman-umby1.jpginfreal1.jpg

Attachments

in3.jpg

These figures are awesome! I love the detail you put into them even at such a small scale.

A few questions:

  1. Did you work from someone else’s design, or were you given a character brief and allowed to interpret it in your own style?

  2. How long did sculpting a single figure take? Which figure needed the most edits?

  3. Did you pose the figures in ZBrush, or did you export to another program for posing?

  4. Will you post a breakdown of one or more figures?

Thanks for posting your work! Very inspiring!

Hey man! Thank you so much for the support!
To answer your questions:

1- Majority of the time I’m given a concept, sometimes its as extensive as a fully professionally illustrated piece, other times it can be a doodle on a napkin! It entirely depends on the client. For example, Fantasy Flight was very specific on what they wanted, you had to adapt the art so it was printable in terms of design but a lot less freedom in terms of design elements. For Infamy, I got great line work to go from, but James was super happy and encouraged me to develop and add stuff in and work my own ideas in!

2- Most sculpts take under a week, very sort in terms of sculpt work. But edits can carry on for a LONG time. So for example the Star Wars Fantasy Flight mini work had a lot of feedback, and some sculpts can take up to a month of back and forth between emails and paintovers!

3- I pose everything in ZBrush using the transpose tools! I only ever posed using a third party program when I worked for NECA/Whizkids where we had to export to 3DSMax to set up a basic rig.

4-Absolutely! I’ll be updating this thread with all the work I can show from my various clients and I’ll chuck in some breakdowns, some rendering tutorials and all-sorts so stay tuned!

Thank you so much again for your support, I’m so happy I can inspire others and give back to the community!

Congrats for top row.:+1:
Nice to see few characters from FFG,specially from Descent project.
I have that first character.

Nice work man. :+1:

Wow thank you so much! I’ve been on these forums for seven years and I’ve always dreamed of hitting that top row… and it happened!

Thanks for the support everyone!

Next post! -

Kickstarter Miniatures -

After I started freelancing, I hit some very quiet/rough spots in my work. I was struggling to find clients and work! So I headed to kickstarter and started PM’ing every single miniature campaign asking if they needed sculptors! Suffice to say, it payed off and as a result I’ve worked on loads of great kickstarters, mostly odd-jobs and one offs, but fantastic experience!
-Green Fairy Studios
GF.jpg
-Ulfsark Games
TIO1.jpg
TIO2.jpg
-Megaton Games
asm1.jpg
-Jasco Games
deadmeat1.jpg
-Paranoid Miniatures
PRND1.jpg

…the right tool for your work! :wink:

More kickstarter miniatures! -
I’ve had the amazing chance to work on both big names and small names in the industry, from brand new startup Moonstone to big franchises such as Street Fighter and Dark Souls! (More to come!)
-Dark Souls Boardgame (Steamforged)


-Banner Saga (Megacon)
bswb.jpg
-Misborn Boardgame (Crafty Games)
mb1.jpg
Moonstone - https://www.facebook.com/moonstonethegame
thomas-lishman-firespittgob1.jpg
msn2.jpg

-Streetfigher Boardgame (Jasco Games)
thomas-lishman-ryujasco.jpg

Attachments

bswb.jpg

mb1.jpg

thomas-lishman-firespittgob1.jpg

Congratulations on your top row! I especially like your stylizations on Moonstone. I was wondering if you could share some advice on how to get the best light and dark shape information from your ZBrush models in Keyshot? I am thinking it is best to abandon MatCaps and work instead with Keyshot’s materials to develop techniques to get the best details in renders, and it certainly shows that you have. It looks like you are placing several lights in Keyshot, sometimes you emphasize a brighter top light, and sometimes I see you achieve a nice rim light from behind. I was wondering if you could share some of your thinking about Keyshot?

Also, are these figures sold in the States?
:+1:small_orange_diamond:+1:small_orange_diamond:+1:small_orange_diamond:+1:

amazing work, love the infamy models! full of character! :slight_smile:

Lot of fun stuff here! My favorite is the Banner Saga stuff. Huge fan of that game.

When I think of where I wanna get to with my stuff, this is exactly it. Really incredible work.

love the style :+1:

Thank you so much guys!
The amount of feedback I’ve had has been so overwhelming, thank you! I will be doing a full lighting and rendering tutorial for Keyshot if anyone is interested!

Another post- More kickstarter stuff!

These two guys were done for Judgement Games based in Australia!

https://www.facebook.com/play.judgement/

thomas-lishman-rak1-80.jpgrakkirscaled1.jpgthomas-lishman-bastian1.jpgthomas-lishman-bastian.jpg

Attachments

thomas-lishman-rak1-80.jpg

thomas-lishman-bastian1.jpg

Fantastic work :smiley: and congrats on top row!!!

Awesome work Tom! Congrats on the Top Row! Well deserved!

Man I love your style, It’s really cool. and I’m amazed by the sheer amount of characters you did. And yeah man we’d appreciate very much if you could do a lil tutorial on keyshot renders and some of your character creating workflows!!! And one last question, how long did it take to do these sculpts on average?
cheers man!!
rock on brother!!! :+1:

really nice work overall. Congrats on top row!

Hey guys! Thanks again!

More sculpts! This time for video game client: Dreadbit Games and their Steam/PS4 game Seraph!

Final polycount was 15k each (tri) with 2k maps.

ZBrush for all modelling!

Attachments