Johnny Cruze Look Development 1/3

           The year is 2186 and much of humanities footprint has been expunged by flames and ash, a global wide drought accompanied by volcanic eruptions from platelet shifts across the planet has led to unprecedented destruction from uncontrolled fires that have scorched much of the earth. The majority of the public now lives within overpopulated large glass domes with controlled ecosystems. These massive biodomes act as individual governments shielding the public from The Wild where the poor live and ruthless battles over remaining water reservoirs and pipelines are common place.

           Johnny Cruze is 35 years old and has been living off of the barren land since his family was killed during the water wars when he was just nine years old.  Cruze’s beliefs are simple and idealistic, everyone should have the freedom to go where they please and to live off of the planet regardless of who owns the territory, only through this process will the planet bounce back and reach equilibrium again.  Unfortunately, most of The Wilds inhabitants are cut throats looking to make a quick dime by selling information or water to the biodomes occupants. 

       Johnny Cruze utilizes the skilled use of two handguns, wit and speed to stay ahead of his enemies and to help disperse water to those who are not fortunate enough to live within the biodomes.

Use of Reference for Character Development:

The following two character sheets have labels that directly correspond with the reference materials I have gathered below.  A select few objects have changed throughout the design process and have therefore been removed. Also a Winchester was added to the character to open up long range story telling possibilities such as hunting and sharpshooting props or enemies.

Rendering Considerations:

This is a reference for my rendering style. It depicts a high quality collectible action figure and a camera shot using a high amount of depth of field.

Johnny Cruze Look Development 2/3

After considering the aesthetics of some key influences I decided that I wanted to unify all of the colors of my character and desaturate them.  While this could be done in post effects I thought it would be better to make it so that no matter what lighting rig he was in he would still have a washed out post apocalyptic grit to his appearance.  I did this by using subsurface scattering to mute his color pallet. So despite his color maps being fairly high in saturation, the renderer is allowing light to pass through the surface and bounce back out with a subsurface color made of tans and browns to mute and unify the surface colors.  I used Headus UV Layout to cut clean seams across my character and to unwrap my UVs in a way that prevented texture stretching or swimming on my surfaces. I used ZBrushes polypainting capabilities and then added details to the flattened 2D images using Photoshop.  If I were to do it again I would use Mudbox for my painting because I have since learned that its color maps are not dependent on polygon count unlike Zbrushes.  During this process I ran into a major problem with my geometry in the eye which forced me to redo my entire bump and displacement maps after modifying my topology within Maya.  While it was a major time thief I learned a lot by redoing the geometry, bump, and normal maps. I tried to consistently envision my character existing within this world I had imagined and let his scenario determine my material choices. For instance he has a large Shemagh style scarf to protect his face from the sand storms.  His WW2 style goggles would be used during the riding of his hover board to help protect his eyes.  Also, his leg covers, which were referenced from paratroopers, would prevent debris from getting into his footwear and pants even in the case of a fall during a high speed pursuit or get away. Below I have included a video showing the UV layout of the face as well as the effect of the normal maps and bump maps. There is also a carousel of images that includes some screen shots from ZBrush to show some of the Polypainting I did, a screen shot of my Maya materials layout for the body and face shader, an eye render, and a few of my color maps.

Johnny Cruze Look Development 3/3

Here is the final video showing a 10 second camera move as well as the UVs, texture maps, bump maps, normal maps, and material shaders across a variety of environments with different light rigs.

4k Renders:

And finally, here are my final HD renders complete with post editing to place Johnny Cruze where he belongs, The Wild! Please click for 4k, then right click and select view in new tab.

Thank you for your time, I hope you enjoyed watching the project come to life!  -Satcher