Mink from Ryusuke Mita's "Dragon Half"

nova-odos · Sep 2018

Around 2016 I took a class at "Crehana" learning website for Zbrush and I started modeling Mink from Dragon Half as a subject for practice.

Here's the reference image I decided to sculpt

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/5021068/uploads/editor/cs/6ioi6uqa1f2s.jpg

Afterwads I began sculping the model, although I had a prior knowledge on the use of Zbrush, it took me some difficulty to achieve a good 3D model.

Here are some images of my sculpting proces:

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/5021068/uploads/editor/3j/7jtxwyfoga01.png

I started with the head. It took me some time to realize the face had a big deformation up front.

A general sculpt of the whole body. Only parts of the hair are not symmetrical. Head finally looks closer to the illustration.

View from the rear.

Eyes are being studied as to how they can imitate the illustration, since oval or spherical eyes are no good.

Modeling the clothes is always fun. Here are some initial parts.

All main clothes and accesories have been modeled. This character is almost ready.

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/5021068/uploads/editor/lc/7fs7nkn796ua.png

I began using polypaint and matcaps based on the original illustration's colors.

Up to this point, I must disclose I didn't finish my course at "Creahana". Not because it was bad, but because there were other matters that required my attention at the moment...

Later on 2018 after many other projects, I decided to finish this model and I had a better experience doing it since I understood more of Zbrush's functions.

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/5021068/uploads/editor/hg/i7yksgtb875x.png

The first and most tedious thing I did was to Zremesh all Dynameshed objects (which was basically almost everything) and transformed them into beautiful quad meshes.

Also I created a low poly version of each subtool for optimizing future processes, which can be appriciated in this image.

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/5021068/uploads/editor/nb/r320u653ampp.png

Here is the final model, with a high subdivision level on every subtool and with more studied matcaps selections.

I could have left the model like the past image, but I decided to do a rigging to do a basic pose, after all, the initial pose almost resembles the original illustration.

Created some Zspheres and used the Transpose Plugin to pose the character.

Here's the model fully posed in orthografic view. The posing changes were very subtle but still, I had to correct many unwanted deformations.

Here's the final model in Perspective.

A view from the rear.

I did some editing of the rendered image of Zbrush with Affinity Photo.

Another edited render.

Yet another edited render.

And a last edited render.

Thanks for watching!

You can see all images in my Deviantart page at:

https://www.deviantart.com/nova-odos/gallery/40937603/3D-models

Also you can see a Zbrush video timeline at my vimeo: