As a result of my personal summer research, my third 3D sculpting session was dedicated to Evan, a character from Ni No Kuni: Revenant Kingdom,To be fair the idea to sculpt it came up thanks to Playstation, which offered a great discount at the time and I, as my weak nostalgic self, decided YEAH I have good memories of this game why not!
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| I will protect this child with my life |
While playing through it it dawned on me that the character appearance looked actually really simple when you think about it. And since I just finished making an elf bust, I thought what if I tried to make one of the characters as a sculpting subject?
And so we have Evan Pettiwhisker Tildrum. To summarize, he is a young prince who's father had recently died. We meet him at the start of a coup. You then continue through the rest of the game helping him build a NEW kingdom, while trying to unify the other nations to hopefully create '' A world where everyone can live happily ever after''.
Note: This is a chill, feel-good and cute game. And, as I mentioned before, quite nostalgic. The series also has a very Ghibli mood to it all, which is probably part of the reason why I like it so much.
ANYWAY I searched for some reference sheets that would have at least a front and a side image I could follow, and then set up Blender to get to work. I started with the head, which was fairly simple since I didn't have to pay attention to details like wrinkles, muscles or anything realistic. Then I slowly moved on to the body, following the examples of some sculptors I've watched on Youtube. Little by little he was taking shape. Along the way I found a great toon shader tutorial, which is how I managed to give Evan a more cartoony look.
After like 2 weeks of experimenting, remaking stuff, figuring out the best remeshing functions and texturing shenanigans, figuring out shoes and hands... I eventually had my first 3D sculpted full-body model!
Since I've watched a number of videos on Blender sculpting, I realized that it would be great if I actually used him for a pose rather than to leave it at a static T-pose.
Unfortunately...that didn't go as I expected. Turns out rigging a model with multiple things that were added and connected later MAY cause some unexpected...deformation. And errors. And...several other complications, it was not fun.
Needless to say I was annoyed.
But THEN I found that the sculpting mode has a lazy posing brush! Emphasis on ''lazy'', but hey it worked better than rigging did for me.
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| Close up! |
Conclusion: this project has taught me so many things and built up my confidence for actual people modeling in Blender. I am really fired up to see what else I can cook up with my laptop...but for now I think I need a break 😌