Rat Man Carl

concept by 烛野

Made with Maya, ZBrush, Substance Painter, Photoshop, VRay, and NUKE.

Rendered with VRay in Maya.

Detail Shots

Concept

This gorgeous concept created by 烛野 and can be seen here: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/8bNWQQ

Breakdown- Render

Progress Renders

Wireframe

Posing with Blend Shapes

I found that to get the clean, round, stylized shapes I wanted, directly sculpting my poses in ZBrush was more ideal than anything involving rigging and skinning. I sculpted my characters and plush toys into the poses I wanted, then applied that as a blend shape in Maya. I kept the sculpted mesh and continued to update my shapes in Maya, so that they work as well as possible in my composition and with each other.

Marvelous Designer

I began my clothing in Marvelous Designer, and then was not able to get the right swoopy, stylized shapes that I wanted, so I chose to use it as a reference tool instead. I used my results from Marvelous Designer as inspiration for a cleaner version that was hand-sculpted.