Week 33 - Ireena Kolyana Sculpt

Out with one Dungeons and Dragons project, and into another. This time I am focusing on the main NPC of Dungeons and Dragon's 2016 Curse of Strahd Campaign with the central NPC, Lady Ireena Kolyana

Ireena Kolyana is a central NPC in Curse of Strahd, serving as the reincarnated soul of Tatyana, the lost love of Count Strahd von Zarovich. As his latest obsession, she is pursued, bitten, and under immense psychological distress, prompting her brother Ismark to ask adventurers to escort her to safety in Vallaki

She is my party's favorite NPC in our campaign and pivotal to the majority of our stories; as a result, it is bittersweet to be able to connect with her character through art. 

Beauty Shots:

Key Art

Illustration by Hegval on Reddit, permission to create her was obtained before the project began :)

FEEDBACK:

Feedback from Caden Peterson regarding the previous version:

• Overall, you'd do better with strong planarization of the face, then adding volume back as necessary, like literally take the slice tool and just start hacking away at excess geometry.
• Furthermore, the brow and cheekbones are giving you quite a bit of trouble. You're putting too much emphasis in the mandibular notch when in reality it's just high cheekbones that don't need to be as pronounced as you have them.
• The opposite is happening with the brow, you aren't stressing it at all. The bridge of the nose is far too smooth. and has no plane change like I would expect.
• The general proportion is alright, but the eye shape and position on the face is killing you, they need to be a bit higher up, and the eye shape needs to be tweaked. Remember that the eye is surrounded by a bunch of fat deposits and loose skin that make up the eyelid and protect the Maxilla
• Also EYEBROWS—you love putting eyebrows above or below the brow line but never at its apex; the brows always, always, always, ALWAYS go on the outermost point of the brow ridge. the frontal bone of the cranium

The previous version that Caden critiqued:

I found that I really struggle with understanding what makes faces unique and the structure that they are built on; as a result, I tended to copy one face and then use it elsewhere; however, to avoid same-face syndrome, I tried to make her feel unique from Purah.

I decided to make custom alphas since many of the shapes were repeating throughout the design, breaking them down into their basic shapes, I would be able to work later on to add the more finite details, such as sharpening the notches on the triangles into proper points.

I designed the alphas in Adobe Illustrator and depending on the mesh used them as straight alphas or used Zbrush's ability to turn the alpha into mesh to boolean into the right shape.

Example of using the diamond star pattern and extruding the bottom to create cuts in the skirt

Reference Board:

Resources:

One area where I wanted to differentiate Ireena's project from Purah's is in the end result. Since this is a concept that relies heavily on a dramatic lighting setup to make the textures pop I  wanted to use this as an opportunity to bring her through the character workflow to eventually be painted. As a result I started looking into ways to improve my retopology workflow through Zbrush, which now includes EaZYREMESH by Francis-Xavier Martins

General resources used for this project, all of which were used in Purah's sculpt:

• Ruffle Insert Multi-Mesh Brushes for Zbrush by Alexandra Jackson
• Gio Brush for Soft Forms in ZBrush by Pablo Munoz Gomez
• Kirill Senzu's Clothing and Accessories Tutorial
• Mark Lambert's Hair tutorial