The final figure that I had to create on Mudbox was the Douen. I loaded a human body template as I had done for the rest of my characters, and changed the body proportions immediately before sculpting in detail. I made the neck shorter and thinner, and the head slightly wider. I also shortened the arms and the legs and slimmed the torso. The Douen is supposedly the spirit of a young child, which I interpret being about 3/4 years old, and so I need the proportions to fit with this as a child's proportions are not the same as an adult's. Once this was complete I began to sculpt the face. I went for a longer void which filled more of the face this time compared to my first Douen Mudbox test previously. I liked this change as it exaggerated the shape of the face more, especially from the side. It was as if it had been removed from existence completely, and the profile made the effect scarier. I Thought the swirl of the face worked well as it traveled deep into the head and would definitely evoke a feeling of void and depth when painted in dark tones. I crafted the ear next, which I tried to make as anatomically correct as possible by using my classmates as references. The detail made the character sculpt feel more realistic, similar to the style of Dan Roarty and Naughty Dog's sculpts but not quite as detailed. I then made the very short stippled afro hair using a sculpting stamp, which made fine coarse textures over the head. Although the hat will mostly cover the head, in a game there may be scenes where the player encounters the Douen without a hat, or has some type of variation. It is also good to have the entire body model without the hat for greater perspective of the character, e.g. the hair type of the character and the way it is cut and styled etc can reveal pieces of information about the character such as the ethnicity and the culture they are surrounded by.
I continued to sculpt the rest of the body, such as the shoulders, chest, back, arms and the hands. The hands required a lot of anatomical attention, particularly in the palms and the tendons on top of the hand. half way through the first hand I realised that I had forgotten to turn on the local x mirror, and so I had to create the other hand from scratch, which took up extra time in the sculpting process. Despite this, the hands were fairly realistic and the palms of each hand slightly differed, which is true to hands in real life. The next parts I had to sculpt were the legs. I used the pose tool to create a joint in the knee and twist the legs around twice, so that the feet were facing backwards. I then used the sculpt and smoothing tool to exaggerate the twisted flesh by making it jut out more. I then created the feet using similar techniques to the Soucouyant, which resulted in me taking less time as I knew how to create them. The final sculpting touch was to add the skin texture and raised bumps along the skin, much like a skin rash or mosquito bites from being outside at night, which is very common in the Caribbean (speaking from personal experience). The other key component for the model, which was the hat, was crafted in Maya and then imported into Mudbox. At first I was faced with some error messages: One about too many points moving to a vertex which caused a mesh error, and the other about missing UVs. I fixed the missing UV problem by creating more UVs to replace the missing ones, and then tested that this had worked by painting over the hat to see if there was still an error in the UV surface. The paint showed no UV errors so the fix had worked. The vertex problem was resolved by increasing the subdivision count in Maya and then re-importing it into Mudbox. I used a high polygon count to begin crafting the finer details of the hat, such as the ragged straw edges and adding sculpted straw textures. I liked the shape of the final hat as it was more obvious that it was made of straw than in my last model sculpt of the Douen.
Painting the components was next. I painted the hat first, using light earthy colours for the straw and adding darker patches to it to show wear and much use outdoors from where it had become dirty. I then painted a base coat onto the Douen after changing the base material to one that was similar to skin. Next I painted the tones of the Void, using black in the centre and then darker greys and browns as it reach the outer areas of the void swirl. The palms of the hands and the bottom of the feet were then painted in a lighter skin tone, which was a more realistic aspect. I opened a new Mudbox scene to create the cloth wrap-around using the bottom half of a torso. I deleted the faces of the rest of the body and was left with a basic shape, which I sculpted to look like fabric wrapped around the hips. I then experimented with some pattern choices. I knew that I wanted to use colours and patterns typical of Caribbean traditional dress, and so at first I tried making a madras-type print with forest green and bright red. However, the red felt too overbearing, and so I decided to just use red stripes along the green of the skirt fabric. I liked this a lot better as it still reflected the more traditional colours of the Caribbean but at the same time it was not too overbearing. I then imported both the hat and the skirt into the body Mudbox file and put them into place.
The final stage was to pose the figure and render it in Maya. I wanted the pose to contrast strongly against the Soucouyant's predatory pose and the wide stance of the Jumbie. There is something quite scary about a relaxed and unnerving looking figure, so I rested the arms by the sides and had the feet slightly apart. It reminded me of a shy child standing away from a group of other children, but instead of sympathy there is a feeling of dread. I then rendered the Douen in Maya from the front, back, side and close up.
Evaluation
The final model of the Douen did not take as long as I thought it would, despite having the most separate components. The outcome was successful as there is a feeling of distrust and dread, almost as if the child is waiting for the player to follow them into the forest, like in the folklore. I felt that I followed my peer feedback well, for example removing the eye in the centre of the face to create a greater sense of depth. I also felt that I worked around technical problems well for this figure, such as the mesh errors in the hat and using part of the human body template to create the cloth wrap. This was solved much faster than in my previous figure sculpts and resulted in more free time to edit my renders and think about ways to push the project further. Once again, I used my research from my peer feedback, research from earlier in the project and my most recent research on 3D artists to help achieve a high level of detail and present my interpretation of the Douen in the best possible light. I felt that it stuck very well to the original folklore but instead of taking the stories and descriptions literally, I added my own twist on them e.g. the missing face literally became a 'void' in the head, which absorbs the attention of children who are drawn into the forest to play with the Douen, and the backwards feet that became twisted around at the knees, like a gruesome deformity. If I were to improve this in the future, I would test out more colours of the cloth wrap in digital, as I realised that digitally drawn concepts may appear different when in 3D and that my options were somewhat restricted because of this. I ended up having to experiment whilst painting the actual final figure, which is not ideal. Despite this, I think that the final model was a success overall, as it fits well with the mood that would be set in a horror game, and also my own interpretation of the character was not lost throughout the making process.
I continued to sculpt the rest of the body, such as the shoulders, chest, back, arms and the hands. The hands required a lot of anatomical attention, particularly in the palms and the tendons on top of the hand. half way through the first hand I realised that I had forgotten to turn on the local x mirror, and so I had to create the other hand from scratch, which took up extra time in the sculpting process. Despite this, the hands were fairly realistic and the palms of each hand slightly differed, which is true to hands in real life. The next parts I had to sculpt were the legs. I used the pose tool to create a joint in the knee and twist the legs around twice, so that the feet were facing backwards. I then used the sculpt and smoothing tool to exaggerate the twisted flesh by making it jut out more. I then created the feet using similar techniques to the Soucouyant, which resulted in me taking less time as I knew how to create them. The final sculpting touch was to add the skin texture and raised bumps along the skin, much like a skin rash or mosquito bites from being outside at night, which is very common in the Caribbean (speaking from personal experience). The other key component for the model, which was the hat, was crafted in Maya and then imported into Mudbox. At first I was faced with some error messages: One about too many points moving to a vertex which caused a mesh error, and the other about missing UVs. I fixed the missing UV problem by creating more UVs to replace the missing ones, and then tested that this had worked by painting over the hat to see if there was still an error in the UV surface. The paint showed no UV errors so the fix had worked. The vertex problem was resolved by increasing the subdivision count in Maya and then re-importing it into Mudbox. I used a high polygon count to begin crafting the finer details of the hat, such as the ragged straw edges and adding sculpted straw textures. I liked the shape of the final hat as it was more obvious that it was made of straw than in my last model sculpt of the Douen.
Painting the components was next. I painted the hat first, using light earthy colours for the straw and adding darker patches to it to show wear and much use outdoors from where it had become dirty. I then painted a base coat onto the Douen after changing the base material to one that was similar to skin. Next I painted the tones of the Void, using black in the centre and then darker greys and browns as it reach the outer areas of the void swirl. The palms of the hands and the bottom of the feet were then painted in a lighter skin tone, which was a more realistic aspect. I opened a new Mudbox scene to create the cloth wrap-around using the bottom half of a torso. I deleted the faces of the rest of the body and was left with a basic shape, which I sculpted to look like fabric wrapped around the hips. I then experimented with some pattern choices. I knew that I wanted to use colours and patterns typical of Caribbean traditional dress, and so at first I tried making a madras-type print with forest green and bright red. However, the red felt too overbearing, and so I decided to just use red stripes along the green of the skirt fabric. I liked this a lot better as it still reflected the more traditional colours of the Caribbean but at the same time it was not too overbearing. I then imported both the hat and the skirt into the body Mudbox file and put them into place.
The final stage was to pose the figure and render it in Maya. I wanted the pose to contrast strongly against the Soucouyant's predatory pose and the wide stance of the Jumbie. There is something quite scary about a relaxed and unnerving looking figure, so I rested the arms by the sides and had the feet slightly apart. It reminded me of a shy child standing away from a group of other children, but instead of sympathy there is a feeling of dread. I then rendered the Douen in Maya from the front, back, side and close up.
Evaluation
The final model of the Douen did not take as long as I thought it would, despite having the most separate components. The outcome was successful as there is a feeling of distrust and dread, almost as if the child is waiting for the player to follow them into the forest, like in the folklore. I felt that I followed my peer feedback well, for example removing the eye in the centre of the face to create a greater sense of depth. I also felt that I worked around technical problems well for this figure, such as the mesh errors in the hat and using part of the human body template to create the cloth wrap. This was solved much faster than in my previous figure sculpts and resulted in more free time to edit my renders and think about ways to push the project further. Once again, I used my research from my peer feedback, research from earlier in the project and my most recent research on 3D artists to help achieve a high level of detail and present my interpretation of the Douen in the best possible light. I felt that it stuck very well to the original folklore but instead of taking the stories and descriptions literally, I added my own twist on them e.g. the missing face literally became a 'void' in the head, which absorbs the attention of children who are drawn into the forest to play with the Douen, and the backwards feet that became twisted around at the knees, like a gruesome deformity. If I were to improve this in the future, I would test out more colours of the cloth wrap in digital, as I realised that digitally drawn concepts may appear different when in 3D and that my options were somewhat restricted because of this. I ended up having to experiment whilst painting the actual final figure, which is not ideal. Despite this, I think that the final model was a success overall, as it fits well with the mood that would be set in a horror game, and also my own interpretation of the character was not lost throughout the making process.
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