Exploring blockout and concept of slavic goddess.
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Marzanna, as she’s known in Poland (and I’m Polish), is a goddess who brings winter into the world the lady of snow and death. The same deity appears in Slavic beliefs across different countries, where she’s also known as Mora or Morana. In Poland, there’s a long-standing tradition of drowning or burning an effigy of Marzanna at the end of winter, symbolizing the end of the cold season and the arrival of spring.
In this character project, I want to combine Marzanna’s image as a goddess with traditional Slavic dresses and ornaments, aiming for a cohesive overall design. At the same time, I want to show her colder, more merciless side through mechanical and cybernetic elements, which are the main theme of this challenge, while still keeping her divine presence intact.
During the design process, I plan to use materials like silver and ceramic, as they naturally have a cold, austere look. For now, I’m mainly focusing on the outfit I don’t want her to look inappropriate, but I do want to reveal parts of her body that hint at her being mostly robotic.
I’m not very experienced in concept art yet, so this project is part of my process of exploring and refining the right visual direction for this character.
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Czołem i powodzenia! 
Dzięki, również powodzonka! @JoannaHinc0Art
After some thought, I came up with this concept: a mechanical porcelain doll with an icy essence trapped inside.
I almost like the outfit — I’m not entirely sure what’s bothering me yet, but I feel like it could still look better.
Also here are my references
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Love the concept. Very excited to see this come to life
I think that from the waist up it’s okay, but from the waist down it could be a bit more varied. The strip in the middle doesn’t have to be just cut off from the rest, it can have a different shape/length. Maybe not just one layer of the dress, but more, so that the character looks interesting from the side and from the back as well. 
Thanks for the advice
I started designing the lower part of the character and wanted to see if it makes any sense so far. I don’t have a clear idea for the hip mechanism yet, but I’ll figure something out. Honestly, working with hard-surface elements is pretty interesting. I’ve never tried designing a robotic character before, so there’s always something new to learn.
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Today I worked on part of the outfit — this is an initial export from Marvelous Designer. The model still needs further refinement in ZBrush, especially in terms of form and details.
I also wanted to test a material for the dress, so I applied it to the simple UVs from Marvelous and spent some time experimenting in Substance. This is definitely not the final look, more of a quick test to explore direction and give the texture a more futuristic feel.
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Its really starting to come together, good work!
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Love how the torso material is reading! Would be cool to see the skirt be a bit bigger - closer to your concept
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Hey, I’m back with a character progress update. For Marzanna’s face, I decided to sculpt my fiancée’s face as a little Easter egg. She’s always wanted me to create a character where she’d be an inspiration in some way, so this felt like the right moment 
I’ve got a question though: when making a game-ready dress, do you usually simulate how it falls beforehand, or is that something you handle later inside the game engine? I’ll be honest I’m not really feeling how stiff and “stick-out” it looks right now, and I’m not sure if I should just leave it like that.
If you have any good tutorials on this topic (video or written), I’d love to learn more, so feel free to drop a link.
Things are slowly moving forward. I did have a bit of impostor syndrome creep in for a moment, which killed my motivation a bit, but I’m pushing through and I’m going to finish this project as well as I possibly can.
I’m also doing small tests along the way and trying out new techniques for this character, which is why things are a bit all over the place right now. Everything will be cleaned up properly in the final low-poly version.
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Looks awesome! I love the cold, icy look.
I am also glad to hear that I am not the only one with a slight impostor syndrome here Let’s not get discouraged though. I am ultimately thinking of this as an opportunity to learn, develop new skills and have some fun in the process. And having time constraints helps me stay consistent (after all, deadline is the best motivator :))
As for the approach to modeling clothes: as far as I understand, in this case the final result is not supposed to be a “fully functional, game-ready” model. Although it is to be presented in a real-time engine, it will still be a static scene. So I guess simulating clothes on a posed character before throwing it all into the engine would be ok. That said, I’m just a hobbyist, so I may be wrong
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Hey ! For the cloth part, as you are not supposed to animate him, I would suggest to put your character in the pose you like and the try to simulate or sculpt to give him some nice shapes.
Otherwise, in video games, clothing technique really depends on the production and the use of it. If you need it to move and have a strong impact on your character, you sculpt it straight (add some folds because we are not savages) and then let the physic do its magic into the engine. There are a ton of video tutorials for unreal engine on youtube
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