Bird/Human, help w/ feathers and metal texture ZBrush

antihero

Hey all, this is my first thread. I'm hoping I can get some help with this project, mostly with how to do textures or the best way to proceed with feathers. I'm trying to make an owl/human hybrid Native American for a class. It's going to be modeled in ZBrush. I've got a base human modeled in Maya, and at this point it's mostly going to be adding textures and feathers.




I'd like to copy the feathers of the wings of the falcon as much as possible. I love the dark/light rimmed contrast. The problem is I don't know how to do it in ZBrush. Should I make one single feather object and texture it like I want, then physically just lay a million of them down and then merge them together? I would use this kind of feather for the character's head, arms, and wings. I also would like to get a mix of colors, as well as having a transition from dark to light in some areas, like the falcon.

For the legs, I'm hoping to get the tufted/down look of the chest area of the falcon to cover up the joint of the leg, don't know how to sculpt the geometry to make it hair-like as it transitions to the scaly leg.

For the face, I want to get a metallic gold- and silver-flaked texture just like the monk statue, but preserve the expression.

Hope I'm doing this right If anyone has questions about specifics or any suggestions at all I would love to hear them, spare no criticism because I want to be make this as cool as I can and also be realistic about it.

_DeadPixel_

The fastest way to cover a character would be to create an alpha and use that, or sculpt a pattern of feathers and just place the larger ones manually.
That's what I'd do anyway...maybe there are other ways to Zbrush feathers faster but I don't know any.
Here are two examples of Zbrushed feathers:

DWalker

You might want to take a look at Pueblo eagle dancers; they're probably the closest (that I know of, at least) to what you are trying to do.


Some Navajo skin-walkers (a combination witch/shape-shifter) are said to take on the forms of owls, but they are seen as the epitome of evil.

antihero

Here's an update of what I got. I'm going to cover the legs in another subtool that will have a soft down kind of texture, so it will conceal the structure of the upper legs but I thought it was important to actually have the structure for posing and just having a complete concept.

I thought the feet in the first pictures were too big and spindly, kind of like a frog. But in the last picture, I decreased the leg length and the size of the feet and I'm not sure it's a great change either.

The feathers on the head are pretty near done I think. They're a little different from how I wanted them, in terms of having them be more ruffled and chaotic looking, but I might change it but it's pretty time consuming placing them all individually. I'm going to do something similar on the forearms, and I will probably scrap the current wings in favor of something more falcon-like and sharp.

I'd be glad for suggestions and criticisms!