In November 2021 I had the opportunity to work with the utterly brilliant Jo Martin who generously gave much of her own time to help create the action figure of her Doctor Who character, the Fugitive Doctor. Jo is a very kind and approachable human being who clearly relishes portraying her Doctor’s unique qualities. I do not always have the luxury of working with actors and when I do it is often subject to time pressures so it’s a gift when I have real time to work with someone and get to the heart of how they see their character.
The ’Fugitive Doctor’ was bristling with attitude and I really wanted to try and capture that in the sculpt.
The figure is exclusive to Character Options online so if you’d like to get it you can find it here:
https://www.character-online.com/doctor-who-fugitive…
The Fugitive Doctor is one of the rare incarnations of the Doctor who feels comfortable using weapons. I really love ZModeler and Boolean for their combined ability to throw shapes together and quickly arrive at some very complex designs. When I design a gun, I break it down into its components and organize them into folders. These folders are then combined into an assembly folder. If I need to make changes, I can easily modify the specific part and slot it back into the final assembly.
Usually, I sculpt everything in ZBrush. Whenever possible, I prefer to sculpt my characters starting from their anatomy so that the clothing looks more natural. However, sometimes I have to base my sculpts on an existing figure. For example, the Fugitive Doctor was based on the 10th Doctor’s companion Donna. I reused the torso core, upper arms, hips, thighs, and knees from that figure which I was given as scan data that had been taken at the factory. This meant I had to create the character’s unique look while using another character’s anatomy as a base!
I sculpt shoes in layers. First, I create a base shape for the entire shoe or boot. Using the extract tool, I add pieces of ‘leather’ to build up realistic layers. I use the ‘CurveTubeSnap’ brush for the laces. For the brogue holes, I create an ‘InsertMesh’ brush with a cylinder, switch the stroke to ‘freehand’, activate ‘LazyMouse’, and adjust the ‘LazyStep’ to space the holes correctly. I set the depth in the brush palette to “0” and draw cylinders where the holes will be. Then, I split the cylinders into a separate subtool and use them with Boolean to create the final result. This method ensures that I can change the boot’s shape without worrying about preserving the details, as they are added last.
Jo’s beautiful dreadlocks were sculpted using the ‘CurveTubeSnap’ and ‘CurveTube’ brushes with a custom noise from the ‘Surface’ palette. The roots of the dreads were sculpted using ‘ClayBuildup’ with a diffused circular alpha and the roll distance set to “2” in the Stroke>Modifiers Palette. Changing the roll distance elongates the stroke, creating a nice taper at the end with a crisp ‘hair strand’ effect.
If you’d like to hear what Jo thought of it, check here:
