WATER GUN
ARTIST Tim Curry SOFTWARE 3ds Max, Zbrush, Substance Painter, Photoshop, Marmoset Toolbag
Video game artist Tim Curry has worked in game development for eight years, taking on numerous job titles and responsibilities. “Making props is one of my favourite things about game art,” he adds.
Many of Curry’s usual techniques were utilised on this piece. “The most noteworthy technique used was one I learned from Ranulf Busby,” he continues, “who shared how to use parallax in Marmoset Toolbag 3 to simulate the reticle movement of a holographic sight. It was very satisfying to see it work as I expected.”
Finding a technical aspect with which to push forward his work is crucial to Curry’s approach. “I really like finding something technical to do, even if it's small,” he adds. “For this project, it was just the parallax reticle, but I also enjoy simple rigs and animations. I'd like to utilise real-time effects more in the future. While I was working on Water Gun, I thought about how I would animate it for a first-person game. How would you reload it? If I was to revisit, I'd like to experiment with creating animations like that.”
It took character artist Roger Magrini three months to complete work on this lifelike recreation of The Lord Of The Rings author J. R. R. Tolkien. “Everything was hand-sculpted and Polypainted in Zbrush on HD Geometry,” Magrini explains, “except for his pipe, I used Substance for that.” Magrini often uses his artistic experience to create 3D cartoon characters, but he also enjoys the challenge of photorealistic portraits such as this. “I enjoyed most of the process on this,” he says, “but the best part was creating his smile.”
Magrini began by gathering as much reference as possible, all with different angles and lighting setups. “Likeness is like a puzzle,” he adds, “so you need reference to fill in the gaps.” Magrini sculpted the likeness in Zbrush, before adding skin details by hand, using brushes he created. “Then I Polypaint the Albedo, Specular and Bump maps,” he continues.
Magrini challenged himself to achieve photorealism from the very first render, without any postprocessing. “I also like to do a stress test in different lighting setups,” he adds, “to see if things hold up.”