Beowulf Hero, and King Part 2.
After all the research and loosely sketching out of my ideas, it was time to start sculpting the individual components in Zbrush. The first of these was the skull.
Luckily I had purchased a skull for my skull drawing so I had reference material to base my sculpt on. For me, this was the easy bit, sculpting organic shapes. Once you get used to the basic tools in Zbrush it is just a matter of adding and removing “clay” and then moving it around until you get the shape you want. Depending on the use of the sculpt when you’ve finished determines how you refine the mesh for output.
Beowulf is a hero and strong so keeping this in mind I tried to make the skull present these qualities. Starting with the big shapes and not getting bogged down with the detail has to be kept in mind when creating any artwork. Unless you are copying a photo and using a grid. Then, in my view, it is just how good you are at mechanically copying what you see in any given square (controversial maybe?).
After completing the skull the next asset to create was the crown. How simple or how ornate should I make it? What does it symbolise? I didn’t include Grendel and his mother in my artwork focusing instead on the boss-level monster which ended Beowulf’s life, the Dragon (sorry, spoiler).
With this in mind, my initial thought was his skull crown should be crafted from the bones of the dragon. I then thought about what the dragon symbolised in the story and we are back to the overarching theme of Christianity superseding paganism. A gold crown shaped to represent the crown of thorns worn by Christ and shaped from the bones of his vanquished foe seemed apt. Throw in a few precious gems to jazz it up a bit and viola!
The Process
As mentioned previously I used Zbrush for sculpting these digital assets. Starting with the skull as a sphere I manipulated it into a basic skull shape using the clay buildup tool. Slowly moving the clay about it’s so easy to get bogged down with detail. I’m by no means immune to adding more polygons than required and more detail too soon and then having to re-mesh at a lower poly count. Losing detail and projecting the whole thing back again isn’t always ideal.
Once the basic shape is in place, the fun bit starts. Increasing the detail by dividing the poly count means you can add more and more detail. Using the Boolean subtraction function I was able to create and refine the zygomatic arch. When I felt the shape was where I wanted it I started to use the noise plugin to add layers of masked texture. Then when I was happy with the basic texture I used the standard brush with the Alt key (subtract) to remove clay to delineate the joints between the bones of the skull.
At this point in the process of creating the skull, I was able to play a little with the material look of the skull which was awesome. But I still had his mandible to add. The lower jaw started out as a block of clay which was hollowed out with the Boolean subtraction function to look like a horseshoe. Then using the move tool and the clay build-up brush I was able to create more and more detail after I was happy with the basic shape.
Creating the crow was quite a challenge for me. It was the start of what is called hard surface modelling. It’s not quite as intuitive as the organic modelling process. You have to know a lot more about the available tools and how and when to use them. For the crown, I used the symmetry tool and changed the point count option. Then using the move brush again I was able to pull out the “thorns” and then shape them and add the gems. I wanted the crown to have a semi-organic feel so rounding off some of the edges gave it the boney, thorny look I was after.
I created a basic rendered turntable of the completed skull for you to view, just click the play button above to start it.
The beauty of creating the skull digitally means that I am able to easily change the material look of it. There are some crazy combinations and I definitely have my favourites.
