Stylized Character Study
Stylized Modeling & Realistic Look Development
This project brings together the third module of my Character Master, focused on creating a stylized character from concept to final render.
I chose a concept by Nicholas Kole for The Wingfeather Saga because it gave me the opportunity to work on a character very different from the others in my portfolio: an older male character with soft, exaggerated proportions and a warm personality.
The main challenge was finding a balance between cartoony shapes and realistic materials. I wanted to keep the appeal and shapes of the original design while pushing the final look closer to animated films such as Tangled, Frozen or Encanto, where highly stylized characters coexist with fabrics, skin and materials that look real.
Throughout the project, feedback from my tutors Andrés Salvatierra and Miquel Ángel Carriquí helped me refine both the interpretation of the concept and the final character.
2. Retopology and UV mapping
I retopologized the body early in the process and reused that topology as a starting point for several garments that sat close to the skin. By duplicating and adapting the same mesh, I could keep a similar edge flow across multiple clothing layers (which would also make the character easier to prepare for rigging later on) instead of rebuilding each one independently.
The final character was organized across seven UDIMs, although I kept one extra for the proxy of the hair, as I was waiting for the grooming to be finished.
3. Developing the Clothing
The garments were modeled primarily in Maya, focusing on how the different pieces sat on the body and the layers between them worked. Once the main shapes were working, I brought most of the pieces into ZBrush to introduce folds, imperfections and general noise. These were later converted into displacement information.
4. Studying Real Fabrics
As it can be expected, texturing became one of the most important stages of the project. To get the best results, I spent time studying real fabrics, stitching and weave patterns to understand what actually distinguishes one textile from another at close range.
In Substance Painter, I created the weave and fibre information through normal and displacement maps, combining them later with the sculpted displacement from ZBrush. This allowed the larger imperfections of the garments and the much finer fabric structure to remain independent and easier to control.
5. Final touches in Lookdev
The final fabric look was developed in Maya and Arnold. A large part of the result came from balancing several shader properties: sheen, subsurface scattering and different IOR values all contributed to the way light travelled across the different materials.
This workflow was heavily influenced by Leandro Leijnen’s fabric tutorial, which helped me understand how these properties work together and give the illusion of real cloth.
Different materials required different solutions. For example; the suede-like trims needed a softer look to avoid ending up looking like cork, while thinner pieces like the shirt needed enough variation and light transmission to avoid feeling too rigid or opaque.
6. Groom, Lighting & Final Presentation
Once the materials were working, it became clear that the original geometry-based hair didn’t hold up with the rest of the character. The overall look had reached a much more realistic level, and the groom needed to match that quality.
That is when I reached out to Luis Carles Balcázar, Grooming Artist, who created the final hair, moustache, eyebrows and jacket fuzz in Houdini. I’m especially grateful for his contribution, because the groom brought the character much closer to the level I was aiming for.
For the final presentation, I also worked with Dídac Manzanares, Lighting & Compositing Artist, who helped me refine the lighting & compo and advised me throughout the process to get the best possible result.
