BLADE RUNNER
The project, which features high-fidelity skin details, XGEN hair and photo-realistic CGI compositing, sees a strong, confident female athlete wearing an intricately curved prosthetic blade made out of carbon fibre to encourage a positive change in societal attitude towards disability.
The main challenge for us was to highlight the athlete's passionate characteristics through her body language and facial expression. Extensive modelling and the use of micro-level details such as wrinkles and hair were all important aspects to consider to ensure that the final print looked real and believable. Marvelous Designer was used to create the sport garments.
Being the lead character artist, I was responsible for modelling and sculpting both the hero character and clothing and was responsible for shading and texturing.
Gathering references for the female athlete was a key aspect of the development of the 3D model. The character was sculpted in Zbrush and the skin details, including the pores and wrinkles, were made using maps from Texturing XYZ.
Maya's XGEN tool was used to create the character's hair, eyebrows, eyelashes and peach fuzz. In addition, 3D modelling of the prosthetic limb was made in Maya.
Marvelous Designer was used for the sports garment and the textures were made by combining Substance Painter and Photoshop.
The Arnold rendering package was used to render each of the passes and NUKE was integrated into the workflow for compositing which was then enhanced in Photoshop for the final print.