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Malanjo's "The Special One" lay dormant until a rush of inspiration saw it go straight into EXOTIQUE 4 contention.

CGSociety :: Tutorial
8 January 2009,
Miguel Ángelo 'Malanjo' Carvalho Bernardo Teixeira

Some of you may know Malanjo after he won the Best Modeling prize in the 'Uplift Universe - Alien Relations' CGChallenge last year. There seems to be at least six projects on the go in Malanjo's desk at any one time. After spending over two years in a half forgotten folder, Malanjo's 'The Special One' was revived. He submitted his character to Ballistic Publishing and it was selected for inclusion in EXOTIQUE 4 book on page 172-173. He also has work in ELEMENTAL 3. Check out these and many others in Ballistic Publishing's digital art books.

Concept
I started this image almost two and a half years ago, after I saw a couple of real sculptures from the artist Patricia Piccinini in a fine arts magazine. My main point was to do something like we see in ‘The Lord of the Rings.’ Something weird but at the same time sweet and magic, like a good fantasy art story/concept. During these two years, the image was in standby mode, deep in my personal projects folder, and only a few months ago I found a chance to re-start it in my free time.

Modeling
To generate the beginnings of this model, I used poly-by-poly modeling in ZBrush, starting with the head from scratch, and then the body. The work on this image was non-linear, I changed and tweaked a lot of things. When I do personal work, I try to experiment as much as I can, always having an artistic approach to the project instead of a technical approach to it. I’m always focused on having everything in place, always thinking towards the next step, and to have everything working together as a whole! I don’t care how I do the fur on the cloth or the glow effects in the chest. I think about the composition, the color palette, the message in the picture. These are the most important points on the project. In time, the technique will come out naturally into the process.

At this point, I had everything blocked and the main composition is almost in place. I picked some of 'Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres’ paintings as my composition reference (color, geometric composition, mood, light, etc).

The 3D base drawing/modeling from two and a half years ago.

Here are some experiments during the process.

Some Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres references.

The next step was to pick up the old work and re-touch some geometric issues and work them around until I could visualize the design of the new character.

As you can see here, there is no armor on the character, just a simple wire protection. I experiment a lot during the process, like a live performance. Sometimes I stop for days to think about the image, then I go back and I always change something. Reading or seeing other art is good to jog ideas into place. So after experimenting a lot, the modeling of the ‘Special One’ warrior with the 'special gift’ is done. Above and below are some ZBrush add-ons (old concept, without armor) and the final modeling.

As you can see, technically speaking, I tried to have a medium amount of geometry and chose to build the rest of the image using textures and a good composite work on it to solve some little issues.

The lighting rig.

Here’s some textures and shading. (Click to enlarge)

Lighting
For the lighting, I used one key light on the left, one rim light on the right, one fill light to the face, one glow light for the chest and a sky light from mental ray, always looking for some painting references.

Texturing and shading
As you saw before, I used a mental ray render for shading. Why? Because I really like the mental ray skin shader, and the mental ray arch and design material is really simple to use. This is like V-Ray’s base material, my other renderer of choice.

At this stage, I had some materials in mind, like metal and dirty textures, and some graphic ornaments to give some extra love to the textures. I am always looking at the details (not just a huge amount of wrinkles) and drawing variations on the line/form of the image so there is a greater appreciation of the eye. In my research, I have always found about drawing really helpful.

Mental ray skin shader from Jonas Thornqvist. I just scripted a new slot for normal map application. And, Cloth Shader. (Click to enlarge)

Rendering
For the rendering, I did as many passes as I could, to have the maximum control in the time of the composite stage.
I used mental ray and Scanline render to do the render passes (Scanline render was used to render the hair, beard and Zdepth).

To the right is the 3D render passes used, rendered in high resolution for print proposes and exported as TIFF images at 300dpi.

Compositing
As I said before, I used some Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres’ paintings as reference to the mood of the image. I did the composite in Photoshop, because it gives me more control and I can continue experimenting a lot at this stage.

Below are some Photoshop layers. (Click for more)

Final Image
And here’s the final image and some close up images. I hope you enjoyed this tutorial. Thanks and take care!

About the artist
My name is Miguel Angelo CBT, but since I was young everybody has called me Malanjo. I live in Vila Real (a small city in the North of Portugal). I’m 25 years old, born in the beautiful city of Porto and raised in the North of Portugal. I start playing with digital media at age of 16, but my major evolution was when I went in the great College of Fine Arts of Porto (Portugal) working with traditional media.

Nowadays I work as a freelance digital artist, doing TV advertising, motion design, graphic design, 3D, and art in general. In my free time I like to study art, visit museums like Serralves and the Soares dos Reis Museum in Porto. I also do Kickboxing at the gym. I find it is good to do sport, it helps me to concentrate.

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