[WIP] Kafka in Realism Style - Game Ready Character (Honkai Star Rail Fanart)
Hi all!
I'm making Kafka, a character from Honkai Star Rail. As you can see below, Star Rail has heavily stylised anime characters. However, for this project I am aiming for a realistic depiction - so almost like someone is cosplaying the character in the real world.
The character will be game ready by the end of this. I also want to potentially explore rigging her myself rather than using Mixamo.
Here's a turntable I gathered from in the game. The in-game model will be my main reference.
This official concept sheet will also be very handy
My first step was to do a breakdown of the front and back angles of 3D model in-game. This allows me to identify the individual aspects of the character, as well as giving me a deeper understanding of how they are constructed and connect with each other. It also allows me to better identify areas that could be challenging, and break these down into "parts"
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I started by looking at cosplayers whose faces I felt somewhat accurately fit the character's look and feeling.
As the game is set in space, Kafka has no given country or origin, but from looking at these photos (as well as the fact that the game is produced by a Chinese company) I decided that my portrayal of Kafka would be an asian woman. A key reference became the South Korean idol Jang Won Young, who I felt had a very fitting face for Kafka, with quite a mature look.
I also selected orthographic photos of a 3D scan to be my primary reference (I did not use this as a base and do not own the scan). Additionally, a great resource will be the site humanae, a project which provides colour swatches representing skin tones around the world. I also added one quite stylised piece to my reference board, as it can be useful just to see which proportions people exaggerate when making an "idealised" body.
I found this post by Ed Pantera to be very inspiring, both for anatomy reference on an idealised female form, as well as on how to light and present sculpts. It made me realise the importance of using a material and lighting setup with a high contrast and shadows, to highlight details and features and prevent a "flat" look. This makes it much easier to judge the anatomy and notice mistakes.
With these references handy I begun modelling the body, starting from a generic female base mesh.
I created a custom material and lighting setup. I will switch between custom lighting and basic lighting throughout the process - using both keeps your view fresh and lets you spot different issues.
These two references were particularly helpful in getting the structure of the epicanthal fold (a key facial feature in asian faces) correct
I also gathered muscle references to help build the body structure correctly, as well as orthographic views of different body types, to inform me on where different bodies can vary, and what stays the same.
Have definitely taken my time with this base with the intent of using it more in the future, pretty happy with how its turned out, best of luck with your projects too!
Edit: I've edited my post to blur out the 'offending' references, I think as character artist we end up pretty desensitised to it, but I don't want to come across as unprofessional or break polycount TOS