I first built the rifle to practice texturing for PBR. While enjoying the entire process: from gathering reference material and trying to understand all the different parts. Later I painted the Materials Surfaces with Pixel Values, I thought this rifle would be eventually a waste of an asset without a character. So I decided to build a character who will hold the weapon , so to speak.

The “Tags” for this character project would be Dark, Tired, Minimalistic, War

Dark : I do appreciate the dark side of things when it comes to art!

: I do appreciate the dark side of things when it comes to art! Tired : I wanted this character to look exhausted, both mentally and physically.

: I wanted this character to look exhausted, both mentally and physically. Minimalistic: I wanted to concentrate on the mood instead of the intricate costume details. Keeping as little accessories as possible was one of the main goals.

I’ve been consuming a lot of Sci-Fi content for the last few years and might’ve gotten slightly tired of it for now. Looking back in history was quite refreshing for me. We can draw so much inspiration from historical accounts.

Production

I used Softimage for modeling, Zbrush for sculpting, Marvelous Designer for cloth simulation, Photoshop and Quixel’s DDO for texturing, Maya for the scene setup, lighting, Arnold & Marmoset Toolbag for rendering.

I started by making a neutral face. I had a rough idea of how the face was going to be and was aiming for mostly central european female phenotypes. When I was happy with the general features and proportions I worked on the expression that I thought would work with the mood I tried to create, with weary eyes and a subtle frown.