THE PILOT

ARTISTS

Alexandre Mougenot (L), Méline Pischedda (R)

SOFTWARE

Zbrush, Maya, Substance Painter, Marvelous Designer, Arnold, Yeti, Photoshop

This convincingly weathered character was created by Alexandre Mougenot and Méline Pischedda, a pair of fourth-year students at

Ecole MOPA. Mougenot aspires to become a character and creature artist for feature films, whilst Pischedda aims to work as a grooming artist. The entire image took them a month and a half to complete.

“I began modelling The Pilot in the middle of December,” says Mougenot. “When I finished the overall shape I gave the topology to Méline, and she began to work on the grooming. The first week after the holidays we did the rendering and all the breakdown for our showreel.”

The pair faced several challenges on this project, the first of which was to create realistic procedural skin shaders in Substance Designer, before adding the details in Substance Painter.

For grooming, Pischedda took the low-poly mesh and duplicated it to create specific hairs for the pilot’s scalp or beard. “After that, I created guides with Yeti,” she adds. “For long hairs with a certain shape, I use Houdini to create the guides or curves in Maya. I then transform the curves into groom and paint attributes on each guide.”

alexandremougenot0.wixsite.com/portfolio melinepischedda.wixsite.com/portfolio