Sculpting Digital Characters - Week 01: Preperation

I have begun the eight week long course on Sculpting Digital Characters. The course is run through the CGSociety and the teacher is Cesar Dacol Junior, a professional in the field of digital sculpting, recently working on the visceral carnage of 300.

"Perfection is a by product of observation!"

http://workshops.cgsociety.org/courses/000055/

Week one was getting the foundations in place - First I had to consider and write up where I was in life and what I wanted from the course.

Secondly I had to draw front and side orthographics and flesh out the backgroung/history of my character. I have chosen to do a Minotaur type character again, starting from scratch and taking more considerations into the character, and fleshing out some background information to back up the design process (see below what I wrote). Also I made a dozen Alpha Brushes, textures for the final model such as skin texture; pores, wrinkles, warts and scars etc.



Bael, an Elder Bull Ogre, (Minotroll.) Eldest and second last of bloodline.

2024, spring, first quarter full moon, early morning...

Bael sighed and removed his glasses the fire light danced in his watery eyes, heavily burdened by what they have seen. He closed his tattered diary within his giant mecha hand and wearily stood up, straightening slowly exhuming another sigh which exploded into a cough, dry empty and ancient, like gravel pouring through parchment.
‘sh-shit’ He spat, steadying himself.
His chest heaved and his rheumatic hand shook never worse than when the sharp cold of spring morning slowed his bones. The arthritis was a result of six years of heavy labour in the scorching desert planes, as part of the Yeung Railtech mobile site. The Slaves of Hydra. ‘Driving progress across continents.’ But his sorrow today was not memories of past terror, but a bittersweet tension; expected at mid day his granddaughter Leeota, the only of his kin shall arrive. Seven years since he seen her last the summer before the accident. Before she leaves Bael must tell her his secrets. A burden perhaps better to take to the grave, but the Truth must heard.
Bael shuffled across his dusty apartment, a basic dwelling which belongs to a cluster hamlet, in the Black Feather Rock. Too many years he wished to live in the northern Isles, in the fresh green forest of Nuropia or the sub tropics of Yalliv, where it is said the Silvertail River empties crystal clear water, so pure it is said, that drinkers are cured of any illness, bathers re-grow limbs and the indigenous folk of its shores live forever.What good of that he thought, its waters would surely dissolve this ill fated, fragile husk and the blood on these hands would taint the seas for seventy moons....


[Bael as a youth, grew in the foothills of Akkari The Strongest of seven Sons of the Bakshi Clan, travelling with the Talon Academy, trained in combat and dropped into Twelve years of slaughter; a battle for the planet itself.Education.Not as youth, but self learned in later years
Significant events: Warrior in War against the Red Talon Federation. 12 years.Near fatal wounding – lost right arm and eye.Hard Labour camp. after 7 years granted Freedom
Now lives in reclusive mountain hamlet hut, bad plumbing and satellite radio, bana reed and cured timber furniture no paint on walls, unlike most hamlets this one is not painted externally but has chosen to shrink away from view.
He no longer travels far but gazes the sky with his LGX telescope. Looking out into the near cosmos and charting planets and comets, trajectories and timelines. Scribbled runes and diagrams poured into his oversize hard bound Journal, stained and bleached from years of use in the arid hills.
Dislikes: dust, sand, snakes and the twin Suns, VTOL aircraft and The Empire
Likes: telescopes, the black narcissus flower and it's psychoactive petals. Alchemy and Poetry, dreams of utopia and death]


The winter was harsh this year and many fevers were fought, deaths hand refused again and again... determination to complete his tale carried him through it all. Now the pages were final, on the eve of his telling his body feeling like it has already begun to shut down. He will never see the summer, and the storm he was about to unleash. The hand, designed for demolition and destruction... and Death. A construction limb, grafted on after Bael suffered an almost fatel mortar attack which resulted in the loss of his right arm and the sight in his right eye. Bael suffers Rheumatic arthritis and the weight of his mecha arm has become a burden...


So here are my Orthographic drawings for the creature (Minotroll) that I will be building over the next few weeks... the mecha arm will be added in later with clothing and accessories. The drawing represents the naked version of the creature, so symmetrical anatomy can be worked unhindered by garments and such.