Lanky yuzu merchant
My first ZBrush Character
~Story~
This character is a very lanky Yuzu merchant. (>>Yuzu are citrus fruits<<)
He sells Yuzu in the mountains near hot springs. The fresh Yuzu are a delightful refreshment after a hot bath. Often, you’ll find capybaras in these springs, enjoying the Yuzu as well.
The merchant wears a thick poncho and a scarf to fend off the icy cold of the mountains, but beneath that, he’s clad only in underwear—a seemingly counterproductive choice, but essential for freedom of movement on his tall stilts. The stilts are crucial for swiftly navigating through the deep snow.
Around his neck hangs a sign with a drawing showcasing what he has to offer and he displays his goods in an eye-catching way to pique customers' interest. The Yuzu are strung like marionettes around his fingers, swaying and dancing as he moves about on his stilts.
On his back, he always carries a large wooden barrel filled with hot spring water, in which a few capybaras are always dozing, munching on some free Yuzu.
The merchant’s identity remains a mystery, hidden behind a mask. He has left his old life behind, now nothing more but a distant memory...
Getting started...
For this character I used ZBrush for the first time.
To explore ideas, I drew a lot of different characters. Which design aspects stuck, was te contrast between a lanky silhouette mixed with bulky clothes, a wooden mask and the weird idea of displaying his yuzu like marionettes.
Next I blocked out all the basic shapes in ZBrush.
While I used a Wacom tablet with the PC, I mostly found myself enjoying the portability of ZBrush on the iPad.
>>Workflow<<
This was a school project so I had to work with the given prompt of "winter/cold".
As I knew I wanted to make a weird character and I visited Japan at the time of the project, I was inspired to integrate the hot springs in the cold mountains of Japan called "Onsen", as well as a japanese fruit I enjoyed, the "Yuzu". Capybaras can often be seen relaxing in the Japanese hot springs while munching on some refreshing Yuzu, so I took this as an opportunity to bundle all of these aspects into this character.
Block-out
I established the big shapes first, trying to keep the loose, wonky energy of the sketch.
Blocking out the capybaras and the character itself, it was easiest to work with primitives
like cylinders and cubes.
While doing more organic parts of the character, like the poncho, I used ZBrush's cloth physics simulation and tweaked the folds
to match his pose.
For blocking out the barrel I quickly switched to Blender for its intuitive hard surface modeling tools and imported t back into ZBrush.
Sculpting, sculpting and more sculpting
After the initial blockout I spent my time carving out any major shapes, trying to keep the overall vibe as close to the sketch as possible. This character of course is highly stylized. I gave the capybaras giant heads with big snouts. What this guy is exactly, remains a mystery.
I added personality to this character by paying attention to details like the hole in his sock, giving him shorts underneath his poncho, or tying little knots and bows into the strings that hold the yuzu.
I mostly only used the ClayBuildup, TrimDynamic and Smooth brushes that come with ZBrush to sculpt. Using features like DynaMesh, the ZRemesher, History Project and SculptrisPro, I worked from a low to a high poly model and added detail as I went and where it was needed.
I did that until I was happy :)
Might texture him someday too.
Software used:
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