ZBrush for Concept Design (creatures & characters)

[Ecthelion]

Hello ZBrushers,

I want to show how ZBrush can be used for concept design purposes. Some quite realistic design can be produced in a short amount of time.


Some time ago I started to work on this basic shape of a minotaur. I have not found the time to finish the model yet, but I decided to use the basic shape of the head to produce some concept design for a demon's face.
This is the basic model which was all created from Zspheres. (The fingers were also modeled from Zspheres and added as a subtool):


Then I took only the head to work on the demon's face, you can view some oft he modeling stages here (the ears got lost during the process):

I want to thank the member Mahlikus the Black for this excellent material he created. I often use it because it has this resin look (he also provided the lighting with the material).


Then I played with different materials and exported the ones I liked into Photoshop. A bit of compositing and playing with layers in Photoshop gave me this:


Finally I added some textures and colors which lead to the final result:


I did not use any maps, neither some retopo was done, I just sculpted and doodled around. Altogether this was a few hours of work. Modeling the basic shape of the minotaur's body took about 2 hours. Considering that you only need the head to do this concept, it really is only a few hours work of modeling,sculpting and texturing until you reach a final head design. I think everybody can do this and that's why I love ZBrush; it is intuitive and inspiring.

Constructive crits and comments are always welcome.

Cheers!

[Ecthelion]

Okay, here is another one.

It was created in the same manner as the demon face except that I doodled around with the Zspheres before. I tried to do something rather weird and ended up with the following shape:


Next I sculpted and tweaked it and got what you see in No.I, which appeared to be too much insect-like. A little more tweaking lead to No.II. You can see by the frame that polys are quite weird, which comes from a lot of tweaking. Again there is no retopo, since this is just for concept purposes.


I later got rid of some texture details in order to make the creature appear more "fishy". This is the final model, only some parts are detailed and for the above concept I applied the same working process in Photoshop as before. (The surroundings in the final concept design were composed by matte painting a photograph).

[infamouskiller]

So awsome you gave me a good refrence for a similar model I am doing soon.

From blueprints.com

[delima1975]

Wow, I love your water creature. It looks alive...

[Ecthelion]

Thanks infamouskiller and delima1975 !



For this concept of a monster pit I used one single model of a creature's head and composed and rendered it in ZBrush's 2.5D mode. A little blood and veins was added in Photoshop. The model was the "Space Face" you can view below,I mainly used the upside down version for the composition (second pic below).

[SolidSnakexxx]

Love your water creature as well. Amazing works

[SixxPixels]

Excellent Work!

[Ecthelion]

Thanks for your comments, I really appreciate

[Ecthelion]

Combining 2D concepts and ZBrush sculpts allows me to achieve quite realistic effects in a short amount of time. I used this mask for my upcoming website

I combined it with the flower ornament (above) in Photoshop.

[Ecthelion]

Here I used the demon face from the above first post to create some wall design, again this was composed in Photoshop. Might serve as a cover illustration for a fantasy book.

The same pic, slightly color changed and some more textures, a wall for an environment design.

[Arran J Lewis]

Hi HGM, how on earth did you make them materials? these ones that are using along side this post: "For this concept of a monster ......... mainly used the upside down version for the composition (second pic below)." . They are amazing and I am wondering if they are available on here somewhere or if you want to swap some?

thanks

Arran

[Ecthelion]

Hello Arran,

for the material I simply modified Ralf Stumpf's sculpy material (tried to achieve the typical Super Sculpey look ). You will also have to play around with "adjustments" in the render section in order to get the same look.
Anyhow this is the material,

Cheers!

[Arran J Lewis]

keep up the good work.

Arran

[Ecthelion]

I am currently working on an Orc design. The creature is far from being finished. It will be a full body creature and I'm just up to subdivision level 4, anyhow I started detailing the face (now lower teeth though... ). The orc will surely undergo some additional changes, and I'll post the full creature with clothes etc. in the near future.
Anyhow, the Zombie was just a coincidence, because this morning after drinking some coffee, I was looking at the coffee grounds (strange, I know but I swear I only do it once in a while ) and the texture appeared quite ugly to me, so I took a quick picture (see below). Taking texture pics is really a habit.
When I continued working on the Orc today, I came across the pic of the coffee grounds and at the end of a day I just wanted to play around with what I had done so far, so I combined the texture with the Orc's face. I played a bit with hue and colors in Photoshop and then painted in some highlights and shadows. I think it might be some cool concept design for a zombie.

[Quester99]

wow, man, your stuff is awesome! How long have you been using Zbrush?