Dobbie

For my next model, I intended to recreate the girl from my character concept art project. Again, I wanted to follow through with my projects from Drawing for games. Here's are a couple of photos of what I wanted to recreate:

This is my Photoshop drawing, nearly completed as an A3 piece for the Character concept art project.

This is my reference image and inspiration for my character. 

                                          

So, in order to create my girl as a Zbrush model, I have started off with a ZSphere and pulled up a few more ZSpheres on one side for the pigtail. I have then chose the option of Mirror from the right hand side menu, in order to copy the exact pigtail on the other side of the head. I have then clicked on the Edit button or T as a shortcut and started modelling. I have selected the Move elastic brush from the brush palette in order to deform the head to a more realistic human head, and then chose the Clay buildup brush from the same Brush palette to create the eye brows, by just click and dragging the pen onto the graphics tablet. In order to "dig" the holes for the eyes, I kept the Clay buildup brush and with Alt pressed, I have sculpted inside the head. I have then appended 2 Spheres 3D for the eyes and by using the Move option in the menu above the canvas, I have placed the eye balls in their sockets. In order to do this with precision, I have also selected the Transparent option for the head subtool, from the vertical menu on the right side of the canvas. This helps to see the exact position and size of the eyeballs without the interference of the solid geometry of the head.

I have also clicked on Geometry in Tools on the right side of the screen and Divided my model to subdivision 5, in order to get more accurate details onto the face. This however, increases the number of polygons the model has, and with the detail added, it will probably increase a lot more. In order to import such a model into a game engine, I would need to have no more than  2000-3000 polygons, otherwise it would not work, so I will need to add the detail and try and decrease the number of polies before finishing my model.

However, after an hour of modelling, a few of my colleagues have asked me if I am modelling Dobbie from Harry Potter...  So I did a bit of research, asI am not a fan of Harry Potter movies and am only familiar with the main characters. The photo that I have found online, was pretty similar to my model, so all the comments I have received,  did make sense...

Here's is my new reference/inspiration for my model: 

Dobbie - Harry Potter

So here is an intermediate stage of Dobbie. I have remodeled the ears out of what was meant to be the girl's pigtails. for this I have used the Clay buildup brush from the brush palette to add clay and also sculpt inside the ears. I have then used the Damn Standard brush from the same brush palette and increased the draw size in order to change the cheeks and jawline, to make it look more like Dobbie. Next step: eyes and nose need to get bigger and I think it looks pretty similar to Dobbie.

I have now increased the eyes by first deleting one layer with an eye and then using Scale in the Deformation for the Eye that was left to work on and then duplicating the layer. In order to colour the eye, I have selected Radial symmetry in Transformation ( with the radius left at the default value of 8) and then with RGB selected, brush on spray, I have painted the green for the iris. For the inner part of the iris, I have reduced the drawing size  considerably and selected black from the colour palette. However, I am not quite happy with the lime green for the iris, as it doesn't look at all realistic, so I intend to change the shade of green.

This is just a different angle of the same stage of my model. I have also remodelled the ears and added detail to the eye brows and eye lashes by using Damn Standard brush for the eye lashes with Alt clicked in order to pinch the eye brows, and Using the Inflate brush for the forehead and cheeks in order to make them more obvious and make them look more like the original.

For this stage I have selected Drag Square option for the brush and Kin15.psd as a texture in Lightbox and just dragged the pen on the graphics tablet for the skin texture, to give it the wrinkled look that the original model has got.

This is a video of my Dobbie, just to show how the back was textured as well.
In order to be able to upload the movie on my blog, I have exported the movie made in Zbrush and saved it as a .mov file