THE BOY SAVIOR
I’ve never really played League Of Legends or any of Riot’s other games, but the show Arcane by studio Fortiche really immersed me into the world of Piltover and Zaun. Ekko quickly became my favourite character. So this is an homage to ‘The Boy Savior’, as he is dubbed in the show.
Ekko’s head was sculpted from scratch from a sphere. I used Texturingxyz’s VFACE asset and wrapped the topology onto my sculpt using R3DS Wrap. Texturingxyz has a ton of helpful tutorials available on its website that I would recommend checking out. I then applied the displacement map that Texturingxyz provides onto the model in Zbrush.
The scene was set up in Maya. I hopped between Zbrush, Substance Painter and Maya to adjust the textures and the sculpt as needed. The scarf and the tank top was done quickly in Marvelous Designer, and the hair was achieved using Maya’s Xgen. This was a really challenging part of the character; it was a lot of trial and error of trying different combinations and orders of the Xgen modifiers to achieve this look.
Instead of Photoshop, I chose to comp the final image in Davinci Resolve. Resolve’s colour grading tools are very comprehensive. I really wanted a sense that this was a frame taken out of a movie, so removing that clinical ‘CG’ feel was crucial. I added some camera motion blur and I also used a plug-in called Dehancer to achieve some of the colour and the grain effect.
I’d always wanted to achieve a cinematic feel to my renders, but felt like it had always eluded me. So a couple of years ago, I picked up a BMPCC 4K to learn how physical cameras and lenses work by shooting short videos here and there. I learned how to work with real-world lights, using modifiers to achieve the looks I wanted. This experience was invaluable to me, as the fundamentals of cinematography in real-world sets directly transfer into 3D.
A COUPLE OF YEARS AGO, I PICKED UP A BMPCC 4K TO LEARN HOW PHYSICAL CAMERAS AND LENSES WORK… THIS EXPERIENCE WAS INVALUABLE