Hell Gatekeeper - character showcase.
modeling project that went a little bit further than expected
Happy Halloween!
Back in January, I saw this character design by Satoshi Matsuura (hiziripro) and decided to model it as an exercise. A lot of things happened in the middle of the process and I kept postponing this project, but everytime I got back to it I wanted to add something to the model.
Please check the full video on the embed vimeo link below!
The references kept coming in my mind and I wanted to take my projects to a next level. I felt like it would be a fun challenge to rig and animate this character. Once the animation was finished, I realized that it was missing a proper set, and with the set done I realized we needed a proper lighting, then a proper post production, then finally a sound working.
With all that, the project culminated in a video. It’s not a movie or anything like that, but I’m very proud of the way it came out. It’s my first project approaching so many steps of a production, I learned a lot! I feel like it’s my first step on the way toward become a director.
I think this kind of project is perfect to invite our mind to think the final piece as the main focus, then work everything to make this very piece look the best as possible. I felt tempted to just make the model, take pretty screenshot from ZBrush, maybe shot a couple of clay renders, but it wouldn’t really fulfill what I was expecting for my next project. I love modeling, and I love modeling showcases, don’t get me wrong — it’s just that recently I fell on this conclusion that I want to work my artistic side to make final pieces, more specifically with animations.
In this post I’ll share a collection of results I got with this project. The character and the animation has everything to do with Halloween, so I wanted to use this date to share how everything came out.
Please enjoy and stay tuned, because in the next posts I’ll be sharing a much deeper view on the project, with screenshots, videos, explanations. It will be a breakdown of the modeling and rig process. Later on I’ll share a volume shader on my Gumroad, the same shader I used to make this character appear and disappear on the video.
Enjoy!
artstation.
I’m gradually moving my personal profiles to the castle building. identity, but I’m still using some platforms. I posted this very project on my ArtStation profile — check it out! — while I’ll also publish the project on Behance. Ideally I’d post everything today (to use the Halloween date), but still have a lot of things to do and I’m pretty tired since I finished most of these medias today — Luis wasn’t able to make the music until last night, so I had to mix everything before going to bed at almost 5 am.
Well, hope you had fun with this post. Please feel free to comment and share this post, your support would be very appreciated. Also, if you’re interested, I’m going to share much more about it in the next posts with a deep breakdown and a free volume shader for Blender.
Stay tuned!