Week 13 - Ice Druid Sculpt

Character Creator 5

I took majority of this week to play around with Acurig on Character Creator 5 (big shoutout to Mark from CH21 for recommending it!) as it will help me figure out what elements should be sculpted in post-pose effect versus sending through Acurig - which is a pain since it has a max polycount budget of 300k.

I did a test pose just to see how the skin weighting would work and learned that most of the chain/bell elements would be better sculpted in motion rather than in A pose. I also took this chance to change her horns to closer what they appear in the concept and make small adjustments according to the feedback from last week.

Resources

Auto Rig Tool for Creating Skeleton Characters: Advanced AccuRIG | Character Creator 4 Tutorial by Realliusion

Posing ZBrush Characters with Character Creator & AccuRiG | Pose Tools & Pose Link Tutorial by Realliusion

Posing References

I wanted to pick a pose that was stable and powerful looking, however as I did more moving I realized this would hide a lot of the visual elements/fabrics and cause odd wrinkles that could be hard to sculpt/print.

Current Pose

I'm not 100% happy with how the pose is coming out so far, It feels far more active than anticipated and treaded the line of being scared/fearful for much of the process. I will likely pause and put time on the staff before continuing with this pose/returning to revise it.

Staff Design

Although Purah herself has a lot of art reference, her staff does not. The staff is a custom weapon made by our Game Master (who runs the game of Icewind Dale) as dropping from an Ice Hag upon killing her. 

This weapon is very powerful, as it has four different spells its able to cast, in addition to being able to fly. This staff origionally had a curse upon it, where if the user did not cleanse it with blood, it would suck away at the user's life essance.

Although the archetype of hags are commonly seen with weapons, I wanted to make this weapon feel unique, both due to it's powerful nature, but also because it perfectly compliment's Purah's character arc.

I ended up deciding on this concept (generated by Gemini.ai) as it ties in the more subtle design elements of Purah, that being the tiger skull of her home Nomad tribe, and the owl feathers, being representative of her dedication to her goddess.

I plan on sculpting small clumps of snow a the top of the staff and covering the bottom in a blood red to further tie it together.

Overall References

I added more references for, obviously, the pose and staff, however I also added more material to the skeleton clothing, hair, and alternative weapons that could be added onto her design from her character sheet as additional scope.

Known Critique

Dasha (Cohort 18)

• Emphasize that corset by making the dress underneath pop out more to show the fabric compression
• Add more anatomical forms on that spine, I think it's a cool design element and you can push it even more.
• I would also think about how the character would actually move, like how can she bend with that wide corset and those rigid elements around her lower back.