If you want to see various production shots for this project, I documented the entire thing on the Artstation submission here. This page has tons of WIP images even from the very initial concept stage with beautiful concept models.

Working on Ornamental Elements

I’ll start with the Boleadoras. Simply put those ornaments were created using an alpha pack by JRO Tools. It contained various alphas which are great for sculpting or painting details with.

One of the things I wanted to avoid when using a pack like this was looking like I’d used an alpha pack. I started concepting with them in Photoshop trying to come up with a shape that was both appealing and original as well as incorporated traditional Japanese designs. This took quite a bit of time going back and forth from ZBrush, Photoshop and sometimes Maya to finally get a design I was happy with.

Early Concepts were intricate but still too western for the Japanese themes. (Right) The final alpha mask used in ZBrush: