THOR’SILDEON

ARTIST

Connor Sheehan

SOFTWARE

Blender, Cycles, Photoshop

Freelance concept artist Connor Sheehan spent roughly four hours creating this epic image, having modelled and conceived the characters separately. Sheehan particularly enjoyed creating a functional piece of fantasy armour for his character, which was inspired by modern-day military gear.

“The characters were created in Blender using something I like to refer to as a calamari rig,” Sheehan tells

3D World. “I model the character as if it was an asset and then parent the limbs to each other to form a faux rig. For example, fingers to hands, hands to forearms and so on.” In this way, he treats his characters like environment assets, using transform tools to position the limbs and create simple poses. “Doing this,

I can create a character that I can reuse in the pipeline multiple times without spending time on rigging or animation,” he adds.

In his pursuit to find the most efficient way of working, Sheehan uses programs like AKVIS Oilpaint and Topaz Studio 2 to quickly apply brush strokes and filters to a piece before rendering out several of them with varying styles and paint strokes. “In Photoshop, I apply this one by one, painting them in with masks as to not overwhelm the piece,” he explains. “The key is to ensure the foundations of the piece remain and you’re just adding the cherries on top. To make a piece believable you can either go hyperreal, which takes too long for me and is a bit of a bore, or you could take the piece towards a more painterly and expressive finish, which I find does the job perfectly. With a few personal tweaks and overpainting, I'm done!”

I MODEL THE CHARACTER AS IF IT WAS AN ASSET AND THEN PARENT THE LIMBS TO EACH OTHER TO FORM A FAUX RIG