KID AND THE HYENAS

ARTIST

David Kwahk

SOFTWARE

Maya, V-ray, Zbrush, Mudbox, Mari, Nukex, Substance Painter, Marvelous Designer

Modelling, texturing, lookdev artist and 3D generalist David Kwahk recently graduated from Gnomon – School of Visual Effects, Games & Animation and is busy looking for his first job in the industry. Kwahk created this emotive piece for a demo reel class at Gnomon taught by Miguel Ortega. The piece is based on a concept by concept designer Xiaoyu Huang. “My favourite part was working on the kid’s expression and body language,” Kwahk recalls. “What really struck me when I saw Xiaoyu’s painting for the first time was how he portrayed a sense of normalcy in what would otherwise be a tense situation. The lighting is flat and muted, neither of the hyenas look theatrical and the kid isn’t shrivelling back in fear or being overly daring. I thought that added so much more impact.”

Kwahk’s characters are usually posed in Zbrush with Transpose Master, but with this project he took the model into Mixamo to generate a basic rig that could be used to pose the kid in Maya. “This made it really easy to block out the scene since I wouldn’t have to keep going between Maya and Zbrush,” he adds. “After posing I brought the model into Marvelous Designer as a morph target to have the shirt simulate and sit naturally. I try and keep texturing as procedural as possible – the vast majority of my Mari workflow is adjusting tileables with the colour lookup, hue, saturation, value, levels, and brightness lookup nodes. My masks are usually air brushed in with procedural overlays to give it natural breakup.”

I BROUGHT THE MODEL INTO MARVELOUS DESIGNER AS A MORPH TARGET TO HAVE THE SHIRT SIMULATE AND SIT NATURALLY