This character was created for the Modelling and Sculpting and Material Creation modules on the MA 3D Game Art course at Teesside University. 

I love the original Dark Crystal movie and Netflix show, and wanted to learn Marvellous Designer so I picked SkekSo, The Emperor, specifically the version from Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance.

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I started with this fairly lumpy blockout in ZBrush, and tried to find the main shapes in the character. As rigging and skinning wasn't a main part of the modules I was creating this piece for, I sculpted the character in place, instead of in a T or A pose.

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I sculpted the face and hands first to get a good read on the character's personality and ensure it was a good quality as those two areas are focal points. I also sculpted up some of the basic forms into something a little more solid to use as an avatar in Marvellous Designer upon which to simulate the fabric elements.

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I then took a break to create the Staff prop, going back and forth between ZBrush and 3DS Max to make sure that the more organic elements flowed well into the more traditional hard surface elements. 

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After this, I worked on sculpting and improving areas that weren't looking as developed, such as the neck, ruff, arms and torso. I then started to create the accessories - the ornate beak came first. I drew out the decoration onto simple planes that were shaped around the face area it attaches to, then extruded the patterns, softened the transitions between the basic plane and raised elements then detailed with the damstandard and flatten brushes to introduce wear and get some nice bake detail. 

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After some final cleanup, I retopologised the high poly assets in Topogun, taking care to add extra geometry to support more complex shapes where needed.

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After retopologising, I unwrapped the character, staff, plinth and Crystal of Truth in 3DS Max - they all have 1 unique texture set each, created in Substance Painter, except the character which has 2 unique texture sets. Each texture set is comprised of a Base Colour map, Normal map and a channel packed Ambient Occlusion, Roughness and Metallic map. The staff and character maps are 2k, all other props are 1K. The model is just over 46,000 polys, all props included.

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