Winner Choose: Mastering Visible Storytelling: 3D Artist Journey with Character Creator

Table of Contents

About Tomas Babka

Tomas Bebka, a flexible 3D artist from the Czech Republic, carved a novel path within the digital artwork world. Initially working in hospitality, Tomas finally adopted his ardour for animation and 3D design, incomes a bachelor’s diploma in stop-motion animation. He then honed his 3D abilities with Blender and on-line tutorials. Over the previous 5 years, he made the leap to freelance work, creating all the pieces from 3D printing fashions to animations for commercials. Whereas character design began as extra of a passion, it shortly turned a central focus, inspiring him to discover new instruments and strategies.

Tomas’s Artstation

Origin Story

For the 2024 Reallusion 3D Character Contest, Tomas launched us to “Shanas”, a personality brimming with symbolism and depth. Impressed by the fantasy works of authors like Terry Pratchett, she embodies the resilience and crafty of a real survivor. In Tomas’s story, Shanas comes from a tribe that’s attacked and enslaved by a merciless king who destroys her village. Compelled into the position of a jester, she makes use of her wit, magnificence, and mystical powers to secretly manipulate and management the tyrant. Her distinctive patchwork costume, crafted from scraps, symbolizes her skill to outlive and adapt towards all odds.

A purple string binds a small king puppet to her hand, representing her management over the ruler. Her face paint, impressed by Braveheart, attracts from tribal influences, and a flute, utilized in her rituals, offers her the facility to bind spirits to masks. Tomas’s story-driven strategy makes his work really stand out, with each bit of Shanas’s design telling part of her story.

How Character Creator Advantages His Workflow

Morphs and Expressions

Character Creator’s morph and pose capabilities have been pivotal in bringing Shanas to life. Tomas centered on shaping Shanas’s silhouette to mirror her story and character, one thing he may shortly obtain utilizing Character Creator’s morph targets. “Morphs are crucial for me as a result of the character’s silhouette and shapes inform their story”, he explains. By using these morphs, he was in a position to create a wide range of character shapes shortly, from preliminary idea by way of to last detailing.

Expressions and poses additionally performed an important position. Tomas notably loved posing Shanas together with her flute, which symbolizes her management over the spirits sure to her masks. He may simply save and reuse poses, an environment friendly function for somebody who depends closely on physique language and facial expressions to convey emotion in his characters.

Equipment and Texturing

Equipment have been equally important for Tomas’s work. He conceptualized Shanas’s apparel as a self-made patchwork of material scraps, reflecting her resourcefulness. Tomas relied closely on textures, utilizing Substance Painter so as to add sensible particulars to her costume with out complicated geometry. He additionally integrated Character Creator’s make-up editor, drawing inspiration from tribal face work seen in movies like Braveheart, which enhanced Shanas’s tribal origins and mystical aura.

Blender Auto Setup

Blender Auto Setup was a big timesaver, streamlining the method of establishing shaders in Blender. “In the event you’re skilled with Blender, you may join nodes manually, nevertheless it takes time”, he says. Auto Setup allowed him to bypass the repetitive activity of connecting nodes for nails, eyes, and different complicated supplies, letting him give attention to enhancing his renders relatively than on technical setup. Tomas appreciated how Auto Setup helped translate Character Creator’s high-quality textures and UDIMs effectively into Blender, permitting him to recreate Shanas’s themes of wilderness and resilience.

Closing Ideas

Reflecting on his expertise, Tomas sees character design as a deeply inventive course of that requires a wonderful steadiness of technical talent and storytelling. “The whole lot is in regards to the story for me”, he reveals. With Character Creator, Tomas was in a position to convey his distinctive imaginative and prescient for Shanas to life in a seamless and time-efficient method.

Tomas plans to dive deeper into animation in future tasks, integrating his Character Creator and Blender abilities with Unreal Engine for cinematic animations. His journey exemplifies how 3D artists can use storytelling to raise character design, utilizing instruments like Character Creator and Blender to create artwork that’s as visually compelling as it’s narratively wealthy.