Character sculpt

Little Dino

Client: Personal project
Role: Sculpting, Surfacing, Lighting, Render
Tools: ZBrush, Cinema 4D, Octane

A character study in appeal, inspired by Rex from Toy Story.

Overview

A personal sculpt, modelled in ZBrush and rendered in Cinema 4D with Octane. The exercise was appeal: getting a character to read as warm and slightly anxious from silhouette and eye placement alone, with no animation to help.

The challenge

A still character has one chance to communicate personality. Everything has to come from proportion and expression, and the classic trap with a green reptile is that it goes cold and rubbery the moment the subsurface scattering is pushed too far.

The approach

The head is deliberately oversized and the eyes sit high and close, which is what reads as young rather than menacing. Skin was built with restrained subsurface scattering and a soft key light so the surface stays fleshy instead of glossy.