Reference / Backstory

Name: Verena Calypso
Age: 14
Height: 1.2 Meters
Ability: White magic
Hobbies: Knitting, Potion and blessing bottle making, Crafts, Reading. Looks after the home for her mother.

A cautious person, who previously secluded towards them self and mother. Returning home one day, her mother is attacked. Dark magic creatures badly wounded her and she tries to defend herself. Using magic to defend herself, she rushes to the house to protect her daughter. Her magic becomes weaker the more she uses it, but it was the only way she could defend herself. Once in the house, she yells for her daughter to hide. At this point, the creatures are now attacking the house. Though weak her mother uses the last bit of her strength to destroy the creatures ensuring her daughter’s safety. “The creatures are destroyed, but more will follow,” she tells her daughter. Her mother looks frail, “you need to leave they will come and find you, look for the other white witch”. She suddenly collapses to the ground. Her daughter runs towards her and holds her in her arms. Her mother looks pale and weak, but holds out a book to her. As she takes it, her mother’s eyes close shut as she passes away.

Her mother’s death shocked her. Something like this had never happened before. She looked down at the book her mother left her. Inside it wrote “ I’m sorry my child if you are reading this then I have passed. You must find the white witch I used to talk about. He will teach you how to defend yourself against dark magic. In this book, I have prepared you all the defense spells I know and a guide on where to find him. I’m sorry I did not prepare you enough for this,
know that I love you very much”.

Her mother often spoke of the other white witch past the pasture. So she ventures out to find him, to teach her how to defend herself from dark magic. When travelling she is scared and tries to avoid people. Her magic starts out basic as she only learnt what she knows from her mother. This means that her magic can go wrong and she has a lot to learn. Though she is scared, she travels out to find this witch and whilst doing so discovers what is happening in the normal world.

Based in a modern world, she still has fears of 19th-century witch hunts. So when travelling she tries to hide from people. If she talks to anyone she will not show magic and will be reluctant to use it, even if she has to. When she starts to use it more she will become more confident, and learn more spells to become more powerful. Since her magic starts off as defense. she practices in her rests while walking so she is prepared when she has real fights.

This is based in an alternative modern day, where dark magic influence society and tries to be rid of all white magic. There are few magic users altogether, but the dark magic users have a large control of society. This is because their magic is strong.

From a more rural setting in the middle of nowhere. Some houses nearby, but they are not considered acquaintances. In the woodland, there are animals that her mother would hunt and to retrieve items she would steal from nearby houses. Her mother never let her go out to retrieve these items. When her mother passes she only had what was left in the house. This would be little food and money so when she left she would need to get more money and food.

Then to travel to a town or village setting. The setting is infected by dark magic, that makes normal people frightened of magic. People still live normal lives but it is all influenced by dark magic.

This is about the main character who wanted to go out and interact with the world, because of being previously not allowed leave, though fears doing this. Upon entering the modern world she learns it has been infected by dark magic. She knows simple spells but can only stun, defend and flee. She does not know how to defeat these creatures yet. Once she finds the other witch, he tells her that if she is to learn under him she should use this knowledge to defeat the dark magic. Knowing it’s the only option she agrees.

She is a naturally strong spell-caster. Using spells and potions to eradicate the dark influence. Learning combinations and spells to become more powerful.

The reason why she is a scared and knowledgeable is that her mum always taught her to hide her magic. Her mother believed people would outcast her, like what happened in the past. Her mother barely told her attacking spells so that she could never use it on a human. Only defending and creating spells. She wants to see the world for herself, but once going out into the world she realizes that society has been manipulated by dark magic. This was the real reason her mother hid.

Look ideas:
Traditional, over cluttered, modern based, eccentric, poofy, traveler, Young,
https://www.pinterest.co.uk/characterdesigh/character-outfit-witches/
Influences: Studio Ghibli films, Disney, Harry Potter, witch spring 2 game

 

Concepts

5 October 2017

Silhouette

I used these to figure out the shapes and the look of my character. This are to show personality more than anatomy.

In this I favoured the looks of a baggy jumper and a witch hat. So i started designing on paper some ideas. At this point I was unsure on what art style i wanted, so I made a few diffrent style choses in my design.

6 October 2017

This was another style I wanted to try. I felt the clay-mation best showed the personality of my character.

8 October 2017

This was to help determinate a style from different characters and to experiment with different shapes for the clothing and the body. Some of these looked too old and some too smart for what she would look like. This helped give me an idea of what I wanted to go for.

9 October 2017

These where more clay-mation styles. With this i tried adding a more unique look onto her face. Showing more emotion and shape.

13th October 2017

I started of with grey scale to start out my drawing. I did not think about the values enough in this so it did not come out strong in the end.

12th October 2017

This was going back and trying a hand painted look. I did not like this as she looks too old , the colours are boring and she lacks shape.

13th October 2017

This was using the previous drawings of the clay-mation look to come up with a design that was influenced by the last drawing but looked more unique.

 

14th October 2017

This was another design I came up with, using elements from the last design. Though I followed through and put more detail in that design, I wanted to make sure that it was the right one. I stayed with this last design, because it showed more character. On top of this i felt this one looked more creepy and the proportions are too off.

18th October 2017

A turn around of the character.

5th November 2017

Different ides for the hat. I feel these do not fit well. I wanted a lighter coloured hat, but after comparing these images i find the darker one looks stronger.

13th November 2017

I decided on a hat design that worked best with the character.

20th November 2017

This is the final concepts. From the last post I gave her more of a pose, and updated the turn around to the changes.

27th November 2017

I made a basic turn around because the last one was too hard to read to make a character base. On top of that i found they were some errors in the last Turnaround that are now fixed.

Modelling

 Character Base Mesh

27th November 2017 – 15th January 2018

I started of my model with the head. Focusing on the topology. I started on the head as it is the most stylised part of my character and could take most of my time. Though, I managed to do this quite fast, due to previous practices of face topology. I then went on to the characters body. I started off with the basic underlining form of the character. Even though I was having a jumper on top that would cover it, I wanted to have a base to work off so I could see proportions and use the topology on the jumper.

Below I have fixed the shapes in the in the face as the one above looked unnatural and not like my face concept shape. This picture is isolated turbosmooth as I use that as a reference if my topology is correct. I also went over the shoulder topology, as before the back had no topology.

I did the hands as a separate object as I knew they would have to be in the end. If I was to add them to the body I would have wasted time adding topology so they can be on the arm that would not be used.

For my base mesh I worked low poly with using turbosmooth. Mainly focusing on lines for topology and the silhouette.

I have now changed the indented eyes as from a previous model I found it made the eye look somewhat creepy and flat. This was also the previous model I used as practice for this model. There was a lot of mistakes in this model that I was able to fix in this new character.

This is my final 3D character base ready for Zbrush. The Hair was added in later as I was original going to use the hair tool in Zbrush, but it did not look as nice as a solid mesh. My main concern so far is how it will rig with the overlap of clothing. I have left a lot to do in Zbrush such as the jumpers folds and pockets. and the shoe details.

 

In the final model i have not finshed the topology. This is simple topology fixes that can be added on at the end, such as the knees. I have done this because, I will lose this topology once I Zremesh.

Looking back on this, I should of done more details ready for Zbrush rather that believing I could do it in that software. I think the modelling went well but the topology was not perfect in the face and I needed to fix this later. Overall I belive I managed to capture my character as a 3D character. I changed some details from the concept as they did not translate well into 3D. Such as the feet were too small and did not look as if they could hold the weight of the character.

 

High Poly Sculpt

15th January – 05th March 2018

At first I started putting detail in the face a jumper. This was basic folds and details done with the standard brush. Not all assets are imported at this moment as I was still experimenting on the hair and some I decided to change out for a Zbrush tool, like the buttons.

For the hair I was using the Curve Strap tool to add it to the head. This lacked volume so I used a mesh as a reference to give it volume. This did not look goo so i decided not to use the Curve Strap tool and instead sculpt.

When sculpting the hair I used the dam standard brush to give a stylised look to the hair and to make lines that indicate the flow of hair. I also re modelled the front hair strands so they have more personality.

When working on this i found that I had modelled the jumper wrong. I had to change how the jumper hung at the top so that it did not change much of my mesh.

This is the final sculpted. I left out texture sculpting, as I rather added that to the normal’s when texturing. I tested sculpting the jumper texture with Nano Mesh, but it did not work as the polys are not spread evenly and the mesh had different directions of polys, so the thread pattern did not work well. On top of that projection mapping of it might not come out good. Looking back on this, I could of put more though into the hair and how it would hang and be animated. Other that, I believe it went well.

 

Retopology and High to Low Projection

05th March – 26th March 2018

A lot of details i could go into the lowest subdivisions of Zbrush and it still kept my topology. But anything I used Zremesh on I lost that. Such as the jumper and hair.

For the hair I used Zbrush to draw out the topology for the hair and used that as a guild line for Zbrush to re mesh it. For the jumper I used poly draw to conform the old mesh to the new one.

Retopology went well but i would of liked to have fewer loops around the mouth but if i was to remove them I would of lost detail in the nose.

 

Because of image loss I have now made a good doc:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Wdd944AC3jmq24Mkrfq3N3AAmESGQpt7h4hCsBe3oQ0/edit?usp=sharing