Fairy Tales Challenge - Final Submissions

Continuing the discussion from Fairy Tales Challenge - Final Submissions:

Greetings!

I am Leaves and i will be honored to escort you to a safe place, traveller, since your emergence most definately caused commotion and soon will be noticed. You must trust me!

As you may have guessed, Leaves is a Faun! Roman mythological creature, most likely inspired by Greek - Satyr.
They tend to be the guides to a main character in fables and tales, escorting, helping, indeed a very interesting characters.

Leaves is an alien faun on a distant earthlike planet. Not a typical satyr type, i went to create a unique creature with sort of alienie plant growth on head and legs, inspired by seaweed growth. Bark type skin, stylized proportions. Legs and feet are obviously ostrich inspired for being so super alien looking. Mix of steampunk gear. Walking cane is also a weapon.
Backpack is an oxigene pack, has a small eco-system inside, that is clearly from earth, although Leaves originated neither from earth or from the the planet we encounter him on.
Maybe we will find out some day. Who knows…

p.s. Eco system creates fresh air for the faun. The tree is white birch very common in my home country and I was living out of there more then half of my life - white birch have a particular seeds smell which i remember from chilhood. Almost like a part of me in that character want a breath of my childhood hometown air…

I took this project from a very sillouette and concept i created -

Made model sheet for zbrush -

And equipment -

Screenshots of the first sketches in zbrush -

When i was happy with my A-Pose -


by then i fixed proportions, modeled properly the gear,
I then took it to UVLayout to UV map it. I used UDIM tiles, due to number of objects.
First time using UDIMs.
After that i used a simple rig in Maya to pose the character.

Then it was brought back to zbrush for fixing geometry that was deformed after posing, adding some assymetrical details and cleaning up. Preparing for high to low workflow using “match by mesh name” export to Substance Painter. Where it was textured and rendered.
After many many dances with the voodoo drums and selling my soul to the devil, i managed to texture and bake all of the maps with a result you can see here -

More shots -

After the render on some close ups i discovered a few artifacts which i will fix but not for the submission - simply wont make it. I was pretty sure i was never going to make it but im a happy happy man i did. Hope you guys enjoy Leaves!

Whole project for me was a challenge itself, to tackle all of the issues i had from the start to finish. To say i learned a lot is to say nothing. I think i had every issue possible that i had to deal with.

Great project, great challenge, happy me!


Walking cane -

Sketchfab link -

109 k points

YOUTUBE VIDEO ON THE PROCESS AND CREATING

p.s. Forgive me for being a bit of a donut in terms of submiting my work, first i got myself put on hold somehow and couldnt submit in time, later i created the topic but told to reply with my work to the topic instead. Hope i can still participate! Thanks!

This is incredible! I am not an artist but I was drawn to this posting because I’m currently retelling the Nutcracker and the Mouse-King. I really like how you thought about this and I completely agree with you! This is what the arts minimize when they depict the Mouse King in almost every production. Anybody seeing this would truly understand without words why this Mouse-King is to be feared. He represents the destruction of the human spirit in its purest and most demonic form. Almost as if to say, “There is nothing left - just me.” The ultimate battle between good and evil. And obviously, goodness is always worth defending! Great Job! I would love to see more of your work. I’ll keep checking!