3D CHARACTER ARTIST
GARRETT KITCHENMASTER
Swimmer Character
Original concept by: Xaxaxa
When I first saw this concept created by Xaxaxa, I immediately fell in love with the forms and shapes that were presented. Inspired by the art direction, I created the swimmer character while capturing the distinctive aesthetics of Disney, DreamWorks, and Pixar. This project allowed me to push my stylized art style further and emulate the beauty portrayed in Xaxaxa's concept.
My inspiration and reference for this project largely stemmed from Disney's Ralph Breaks the Internet.
I found the original character artists who worked on the princesses from the film. I then used their work as a reference to create the overall forms of the Swimmer's head and face shape.
For the Swimmer, I began by blocking out the character’s proportions and sculpting finer details in ZBrush. I made sure to focus on creating smooth, flowing shapes while maintaining anatomical believability.
For the Eel, I blocked in the overall shape and pose by using ZSpheres.
Once I felt I had the Eel's overall pose and shape blocked out, I moved on to blocking out its head.
I then retopologized both characters in Maya to create clean topology.
Texturing was done in Substance Painter, where I developed layered materials to translate the 2d design into its 3d form.
I was responsible for creating all textures except for the sand texture. That texture was designed by Rob Tuytel on polyhaven.com.
The clothing on this project was very straightforward. Within my research, I found that the particular swimsuit was closely related to Shekini's V-Neck Swimsuit. Unfortunately, I felt that the back side of this particular outfit did not fit the concept.
I worked on creating a closed back that stretched from the buttocks and hip, up to the shoulders. I felt that this fit made more sense when looking at the concept.
In terms of the props, I noticed that most of them were basic diving tools such as a snorkel, flippers, a harpoon gun, a diving watch, a diving knife, and diving weights.
Finally, I crafted the hair in Houdini. This was my first attempt at creating hair within Houdini's system. While getting over the learning curve, I made sure to carefully balance her long flowing hair while maintaining the weightlessness of being underwater.
I made sure to create a smooth, flowing, and twisting movement to complement the character’s design, once again, taking real-world and stylized aesthetics into consideration.
