So some additional info that I felt didn’t quite fit the main body of the post!
The timing of this was wild. Literally just days before the contest was announced, I had started gather reference for The King of Ireland’s Son because I wanted to model him as a game character. When the challenge was announced, I took it as a sign and gave it my all! This was a super fun learning experience and I’m really proud of how it came out.
Some of the inspirations for this project were the original illustrations from the book, Fortnite, and in particular, Overwatch. Overwatch already has a ton of medieval and fantasy elements enhanced with science-fiction, so I took inspiration from both its style and themes.
I owe a ton to fellow artists and friends for lending a critical eye and amazing constructive criticisms that help push both me and the project to the best it could be.
I had initially planned to render entirely in Unreal Engine 4, but realized Marmoset would serve the project better. Still, the character is fully game ready and I may eventually put him up on Artstation as an asset for folks to use!
The entire character, including all the extra elements, was condensed to just 1 master material, 1 eye clearcoat material, with 8 material instances built from those two.
This is the Unreal render,
The King of Ireland's Son but given that it’s using things like Unreal’s skybox, landscape, and water materials, it didn’t fit the rules for the final submission. Still, really proud of how this came out too!
I haven’t dived into face rigging before, and even in the case of this, it was a very simple rig. Still, it allowed me to create what may be my best piece of very professional animation:
All in all, I’m super proud of this project. It helped me learn a lot, connect to a lot of new folks, and helped me grow as an artist! I’m looking forward to my next project utilizing what I’ve learned.
