THE GIRL WITH THE BOUQUET OF THISTLES

ARTIST

Cherylynn Lima

SOFTWARE

Zbrush, Marvelous Designer, Maya, Xgen, Texturingxyz, Substance Painter, Iray, Photoshop

Freelance 2D and 3D character artist Cherylynn Lima took inspiration from a photo entitled 368 by photographer Elena Mineeva. “The thing I most enjoyed about creating this project was capturing the emotion on the girl's face,” says Lima. “My biggest focus is creating a believable character; I like to see life and experience in their eyes. Throughout my career I've found that creating something I connect with emotionally is the most important part of character creation and art in general. To me, techniques like realism or stylisation, composition, colour theory etc are all tools whose primary function is to tell a story and capture a feeling.”

For producing realistic work such as this, Lima usually begins by sculpting the body and head in Zbrush, before moving on to sculpting or simulating clothes in Marvelous Designer, and retopologising or unwrapping in Maya using the Quad Draw and UV tools. “I now create hair in Maya using Xgen for procedural or planar hair and then finish the model by texturing it in Substance Painter,” she continues. “I would usually use Iray or Marmoset Toolbag to render, but I like to use Arnold for procedural hair.”

Lima is inspired by storytelling that has a strong emotional component, particularly when it is conveyed visually. “I really enjoy films that have strong visual language through colour and composition, movies like The Fall, or the work of Quentin Tarantino, Wes Anderson, Studio Ghibli, Pixar, and many others. I also really love stories that break boundaries or tell me something I've never heard before, like Black Mirror or Akira.”

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