Idea and Backstage:

Ok so here we are again! It was a long journey since the last year where I decided to start a new challenge to myself and create a character from scratch making the full work of the concept art, giving birth to idea, and passing from sketches on papper, digital to the final 3D art.

This guy is called Dulkancelling is one the main characters from "Los Dïas del Venado" (The Days of the Deer) the first Book from La Saga de Los Confines (Saga of the Borderlands), a beautifull and wonderfull trilogy written by the argentinian author Liliana Bodoc.

I readed this book when I was a kid in school and really made part of my soul, is a beautifull, vast and fantastic world that narrates the events arround the conquering of America in a really unique way, making it part of a living fantasy universe with their own magical creatures and races (like the Middle Earth)

Dulkancellin is the warchieff of the army that is going to face the Evil that comes to the lands and that specific army (created gathering all the tribles and peoples from the Land) is called "The Deer Army" so after many sketches about how Dulkancellin is going to look and what he is going to wear I decided to play with with the idea of the "animal-person" So on that line I created the accesory on the belt that mixed with paints on his body make it read the face of an angry deer.
I was trying to think what the enemy would see and how they would feel when they look at the chief, at the angry deer coming on charge leading the army against them, they didn't got the same powerfull weapons (fire weapons) but got their rage. So what did the enemy saw? What do you see? where start the animal , where ends the person? they are the same and they are going to battle"

The goal was also to develop this character thinking on him as the main character of a videogame, somebody brave, heroic, strong, with strong personality that make it pleasant to play with.
So the main inspirations are Kratos, and the complexity ans aesthethics of the outfits of Assassins Creed and Horizon (Zero Dawn and Forbidden west) characters.

Of course this work is inspired by the amazing concepts and art of Gonzalo Kenny the talented oficial ilustrator of the cover of books and the oficial artbook who I had the pleasure of show my work and have an amazing feedback.

On the technical aspect was also a great challenge and learning, I decided to make everything from scratch to push and practice my skills:

- The whole character is sculpted from scratch no basemeshes or scanned body was used

- The whole texturing was made also from scratch, without the use of scanned maps. It was an amazing opportunity and practice doing handpaint skin.

- The lookdev was made in Unreal, Materials and shaders where built from scratch, also the ones for Skin and Hair.
I used the material layer system in combination with exported maps and mask for controlling and customizing areas of dirt, change of color, variation of materials and microdetails.

I really thank to all the artists and colleagues in Sharkmob that took a look at my work since the early stages and give me valuable feedback along the process to improve and Sharkmob itself for the great learning and growing that means to me working everyday as Character Artist creating art for our games.

As always (and as every artist I guess) there are a lot of stuff that I would like to correct or make better but is also now time to close this project and move to new ones with all the learnt along the way.

Once again I would like to highlight and thanks to Gonzalo Kenny and say (as I been asked by him) that I will continue developing and making 3D character of the Saga.

Cheers, stay safe and all the questions, comments and feedbacks are welcome ^^

GABO

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Links:
https://www.artstation.com/gonzalokenny

Gonzalo Kenny´s Illustrations for the saga: https://gonzalokenny.artstation.com/albums/3236795