Horror Challenge 2023 - Final Submissions

Here’s my entry! Ventured wayyy out of my comfort zone and had a blast doing so. Was a ton of fun.

Dr. Alan Sovitz
Research Team Dova
Week 27, 7th Level

In the course of our meticulous investigation, we have discerned the presence of a hitherto unidentified demonic species, tentatively designated “Jester Imps.” The heightened belligerence and inclination towards wanton violence and degradation exhibited by these entities strongly suggests their habitation within the seventh level. While reports from sources of varying reliability suggest sightings across different levels, such assertions remain unverified by our team. The demonic provenance of the Jester Imps has been substantiated, and while their menace to the general populace is not of paramount concern, they pick their targets well. They’re subtle, cunning, and seemingly much more intelligent than the common imps we see littering the skies of the first circle.

Notably, an inclination towards targeting human children has been observed, likely attributable to the relative vulnerability of younger individuals. This in addition to untainted flesh and an effortless fear evocation make them prime targets for the Jester. It is acknowledged that imps, as a subspecies, possess a proclivity for traversing between levels effortlessly; however, the “Jesters” exhibit a notable proficiency even by imp standards. Furthermore, these entities display an exceptional level of intelligence, surpassing that commonly associated with imp species and rivaling certain cognitively advanced beings across the seven levels—an unprecedented characteristic among imps.

A disconcerting behavioral pattern observed among the Jester Imps is their tendency to covet trinkets and baubles from individuals unfortunate enough to encounter them. Analogous to infamous historical serial killers, these entities seem to favor such items as trophies—a novel behavior within the infernal denizens residing across the seven levels.

Our ongoing documentation endeavors will meticulously capture the evolving behavioral patterns of the Jester Imps in the subsequent weeks, recognizing the potential for the Jester situation to escalate to Priority Level 4 or higher.











Here’s a link to a short video of him moving. (I’m a bad animator)

Thanks so much for viewing. And a huge thank you to FlippedNormals for giving us an awesome competition to participate in. It’s cool contests like this that get the word out on both up and coming artists and industry veterans. I hope so much that they’ll do more and I will absolutely be participating in the future!

20 Likes

I finally made it to the finals, I’m not happy with everything, but I still used the skills that I have now, I’ve already seen the work of other guys, they are great, I hope I can do the same soon, good luck to everyone and see you in the new challenge
Sorry for my English)











Uploading: Pumpkinman_low_ass1_pumpkinman_BaseColor.jpg…





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This competition was a blast. I am very happy to have participated. I am thankful of the additional two days, I admit they were crucial for the textures! Good luck to all, loved seeing the different projects come together!



This is the concept I painted to go from…

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WIP items… Modeled and Rendered in Blender. Textured in Substance Painter.




1 Like

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Textures…

Wireframes…




Side Views (kinda)



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Undead Collector.
Hi, this is my first creative challenge ever and big thanks for the opportunity and thanks to other artists for showing their truly inspirational works.

Final render:

Side and Back renders:



Additional renders






Textures and Topology:




And some WIPs…




4 Likes

Ashcarnum

Hi, this is my first creative challenge ever and big thanks for the opportunity and thanks to other artists for showing their truly inspirational works.

Final render


front and side renders

flat colour

character in details

Textures and wireframe





Background

2 Likes

5 Stages of Grief

Additional images (wireframe, textures, and the characters’ different angle views):








Some WIP shots (early iterations, hi-poly sculpts, and lighting):



I used Blender and Krita for this project. Blender 4.0 light linking feature played a BIG role in this one. This was fun and I’m glad I made it in time despite being busy with other works. Thank you for hosting this challenge!

5 Likes

FINAL SUBMISSION FOR ARTHROPOD MAN

Final Render

Front, side, and back view of the character



Wireframe and a texture overview + any additional renders

Wireframe:



Texture Overview:

Additional Renders:


3 Work in progress images to show my journey from start to finish



MORE WIPS HERE: Horror Challenge - Arthropod Man - #7 by DyingTrashPanda

THANK YOU TO ALL FLIPPED NORMALS TEAM AND GOOD LUCK TO EVERYBODY :smiling_face_with_three_hearts:

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                   The Scream Of The Dead

“… and insane conjectures about the black gulfs of chaos from which it was called”

This is my improv on the Lovecraftian cosmic horror theme, inspired by madness and suffering.

I had a lot of fun doing this, and also a lot of frustration :grin: , because I tried some things for the first time.

Mainly UDIM workflow and working in Unreal Engine.

Modeling done in Zbrush, retopo in Blender, UV’s in Maya, rendering in UE5.

Big thanks to FlippedNormals for making this aweosme challenge.

It has been a great pleasure being part of this community. :spider_web: :heart: :spider_web:

Unreal Engine 5 renders

Wips from Zbrush, screenshots from Substance Painter ( I couldn’t get Iray to render properly, don’t know why) and UE5

Wireframe and UV

Maps

Thank you!

8 Likes

Horror Challenge 2023 - Rem Phase

Hello everyone!!!

I finally finished it!

This represents the nightmare I had some time ago… I remember being in
a dark and creepy house, there was no one there and everything was very quiet…
The house was quite empty and there was no furniture. I don’t know why I was there, I was walking around the living room looking for a way out…
Then I saw the stairs and decided to go up… Once I got to the second floor I found myself in a hallway and at the end of it, on the right, I saw a room…
Reaching the entrance, I found a person with his back to me, very static and disturbing…
Anguish assailed me and like in a movie I was frozen! Paralyzed!
As in a camera the view began to zoom in toward that person… To my extreme terror I saw that she slowly began to turn around until I met her gaze, there I panicked…
she was looking at me with wide, fixed eyes! Slowly she began to point her finger at me
and started screaming, but without making a sound, and meanwhile the camera kept going on unstoppably! this made me jolt awake and breathless.

I very much hope I can convey at least some of the anguish I felt that night…

Final render

Additional render

Front, side and back

Wireframe

Textures

WIP






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Tree Man:

Renders:




Additional render:


Process images:



Wireframes:


Texture overview:

4 Likes

Demonic Family
A demon couple who dispels the fears of lonely, fear-ridden children. Ultimately, fear only affects the living.

The theme of the rendered image: A female demon indicating her desire for a third child to complete a happy family atmosphere, with a male demon capturing the moment in a photograph. The male demon, who can see those looking at the photo, seems like he might choose someone from the onlookers.

My thought process:
Before creating the character, I tried to understand fear. I focused on factors that cause feelings like fear, stress, and anxiety. I also wanted to incorporate phobias into the atmosphere I would use. I believe that what triggers our fears is more human-like qualities rather than absurd, magnificent, or powerful forms. It should be quite close to humans but also have differences. To empathize with the creature and for us to be psychologically affected, the creature needed to have human desires and wishes. For example, with the right proportions and mix, messy and dirty hair can be more disturbing and anxiety-inducing than prickly, pointed horns.

As for the environment and supporting objects, I set the theme to the 1900s. Toys of deceased children, the male demon’s camera, an old basement, etc. I added a spotlight to the scene from the same angle to reflect the moment when the male demon took the photo. This also allowed me to adjust the photo’s historical style to match the modeling. The flash’s burst enabled the demon to be easily seen through the broken mirror.

Note: I started the project only 3-4 days before the deadline. Due to the concern that time would not be enough, it became a quick and dirty work. My surfaces are not optimized, UV layouts were done with ready-made settings (smart UV project), and the sculpts are flawed. I apologize for that.

I can’t add images more than one because of I’m new user. So i had to upload my other images to different site. I added lınk for other images.
ps: You don’t have to download album( click the preview button from on site )

Thank you for precious opportunity and best of luck for everyone :blossom:

2 Likes

This is my final submission Dark Forest Guardian.

Final Render

Front-Side-Back Views

Wireframe Views

Textures Overview

Progress pictures




3 Likes


FN RENDER

Side render

Side_v02

Front

Back

Some details

Textures

Wireframe

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The Unfettered Hallow Deacon

Final Submission for the FN horror challenge
oof

It’s my 2nd real-time character and I’ve learnt so much while working on this guy.

Marvelous Designer was used for the clothes. I used Blender to do the sculpting, retopo, UVs, rigging, lighting and rendering. Texturing was done in Substance 3D Painter and the maps were stitched in Photoshop.

Character is an original based on the concept art made by me here → https://www.artstation.com/artwork/blJD9n

"Odyr, The Unfettered Hallow Deacon.
Once a greedy old dejected human who lost his way. A lost priest in the presence of others, who worshiped the great light of the world, he wanted nothing but the semblance of love. Love, that he found in the rotten but alluring Fouled Queen. Tales spoke of her dominion over the world and how she was imprisoned by the Order of the High Sun. Ignoring the ideals of his faith, he held, in secret, a sacrificial ritual in her honor. A summoning. He gave his own soul to bring forth the Fouled Queen. As she rose from the fouled world she resurrected Odyr as one of her fouled servants. The keeper of the souls of all those who trespass her domain. Sustenance for the Queen."




And then some other renders to show the details on the character








For this character I chose a budget of around 150k tris. I knew the bottom part of my character would be expensive in the way that i was imagining doing it hence the high number (well, depending…)

In the end he sits around 137k tris, but this does not include the beard and the hair yet, because those were generated in blender hair system, though I’m looking at real-time hair to change that




Albedo and Normals


My textures are all in 4k, I wanted some crisp definition in those details, I knew the model was going to be seen up close. I wanted to include one of those real time viewers but I haven’t figured out how to do one yet. (Soon)
5 texture sets for my character and 1 for the weapon, eventually there’s going to be another one for the hair as well :wink:

Clothing is simulated in MarvD then exported to Blender and retopo’ed and Uv’ed, then I bring everything into Substance.

I tend to work always in separate files when it comes to highpolies high, my pc isn’t the best with high numbers of polygons. But its worked out so far, just have to always keep a reference on the side.

I should also mention that at this stage I assign different materials to my highpolies depending on what material in the texturing phase. Super quick way to paint using ID masks.


The materials are all done in substance, creating new ones or taking pre existing ones and changing them to get the look I need.

Retopology is then all done by hand… I really need to learn Zbrush :')




Some other renders made during the process to test stuff, or for fun :slight_smile:


(testing lighting and textures)

(testing beard look)

It was an incredible opportunity to work on this guy in the manner that I did, I always thought I would never get around to do him unless I had a deadline, so I thank the FlippedNormals team for setting up another great challenge and I thank everyone else for being such good sport in creative competition, it was super fun working along side u guys and see everybody’s work come to fruition. Much love <3

Good luck to everyone!! :smiley:

My artstation https://www.artstation.com/hailznn

16 Likes

Hello everyone!

About my artwork:

I picked two topics from the list: Frankenstein’s monster and lovecraftian motives. I came up with an idea of mixing these topics in some kind of Hellboy’s vibe, where a Frankenstein’s creature, being a monster himself, fights even more grim and horrible something.
I imagined Frank wears some kind of fisherman’s outfit and the whole model shows a fight between him and monsters. My first idea was a fight versus the octo-monster, but then I decided to make a swarm of horrible fish-people instead.

Final view:

Front, back, side:



Various shots and textures:




WIPs:
My first sketches I made special for the challenge:


3d-process:


Handpainting process:


Model on Sketchfab:

Wow, that was an awesome challenge. I worked at my limits and I’m very happy with the result. I wish good luck to all participants!

12 Likes

Hi folks,

I’d neglected to work on the back of this guy and only realised that was a requirement today… haha! All good, I didn’t expect to win anything, so fully understand the rules must be followed! but I thought I’d submit the work anyway.

I’m relatively new to sculpting (I currently use Blender) and also Substance Painter so this was a great exercise to further my learning in these areas. A deadline is always a useful :slight_smile:

Just been scrolling through everyone’s work, well done to everyone – some fantastic work on show here. Flip Normals crew: thanks for all your useful content and hard work guys, very helpful and inspirational. – J

Final Renders


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HP Sculpt (Blender)

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Wireframe (Blender)

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Substance Painter – Base

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Substance Painter – Material

4 Likes

My final submission of Cheshire Pumpkin with Diablo vibes. This is the spirit of Happy Halloween. It was a pleasure to participate in this competition, thank you and good luck to everyone!

Concepts and steps

And Sketchfab :jack_o_lantern:

14 Likes

3 Likes