The project brief required me to create one large prop that fit in with the theme “Resident Evil in London”. I decided to create a Lion statue, as I wanted to improve my Z-brush sculpting, and had seen similar statues in an existing resident evil game. I also felt I could easily tie it into London by using the Lions in Trafalgar square as reference. However, I wasn’t setting out to completely copy the Trafalgar square lions as I still wanted to use some artistic liberty, but I did still want them to be recognizable and so tried to find a happy medium. As well as this, I felt this could help me in the group project, as this asset can be reused 3 times to create the Lions surrounding nelsons column in Trafalgar square.
After doing some research into job roles, I felt I needed to improve my Zbrush sculpting skills, as well as my texturing skills. When creating this asset I spent a lot of time sculpting the Lion in Zbrush, and as a result of more practice I was able to complete it to a much higher standard than my Horse from my previous project and in much less time. This freed up more time for me to do some research into the materials I was making. I spent a lot of time researching bronze, finding out how its made and how natural and chemical patinas are formed/applied to bronze works. This allowed me to create a really realistic looking bronze texture for my lion that I feel is a huge improvement from my previous materials. I also spent some time working on my quad drawing skills and the topology of my model. This was as a response to some feedback I received about how the lion looked too low poly and the topology was originally inefficient. When i thought about it and looked back to my previous work I realized I needed to try harder to improve in this area. Using some online resources to help me learn how to clean up my topology I feel I managed to improve significantly. When compared to my horse, the lion’s topology is much cleaner and more efficient, meaning I managed to stick to my planned poly count. I could have retopologised the face for a second time in order to save some more polygons but as it was the highest detail area of the lion and had a lot of curves I felt it was OK to lend more polygons to it.
Additionaly, I spent a lot of time creating decals for the prop: Missing person posters that looked weathered, flyers warning residents of a new virus (to imitate the T-virus) and London police and ambulance logos that I created in Photoshop to put on the flyers. While I was making these I recieved some feedback that I should make them look more weathered and damaged, by adding some effects that made it look as though they had been rained on and then dried. To do so I added some more weathering and made the text look like the ink had dripped down the page and smudged. I also went into maya and changed the basemesh of each of the posters by adding more vertices and making them look more crumpled and less flat. This made them look much more realistic.
After looking at my completed prop with all the decals, I noticed that the graffiti looked a little bright and needed to be toned down a bit. I did this by adding a tint on top of the material in unreal, and reexporting the substance painter material with a more muted blue colour. I feel these changes make the posters closely match the prop and as a result all the pieces look like they fit together well.
Overall I’m very happy with the result of my project and how I worked throughout the pipeline. I feel very proud of the final result and feel as though its the best piece of work I have produced so far. I spent a lot of time and effort creating this prop and have managed to improve the Zbrush sculpting and texturing skills that I specified in my brief, as well as some more skills like lighting and my Photoshop graphic design. If i’d had more time I might have spent longer creating a wider variety of posters in order to make them feel less repeated, however this is only a minor change. I would also perhaps measure the real Trafalgar square lions to make sure the model was to the right scale.
Lion Research
Bronze rbg colour values-
https://www.colorhexa.com/cd7f32
https://encycolorpedia.com/88540b
https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/StandardShaderMaterialCharts.html pbr
https://forum.substance3d.com/index.php?topic=14523.0
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/eDrlX
Bronze composition and properties
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bronze
https://www.rotaxmetals.net/bronze-tarnish-and-other-facts-you-need-to-know-before-using-bronze/ – doesnt rust, forms a tarnish/patina
https://homeguides.sfgate.com/fix-corroded-bronze-41728.html
-From this i assumed that the bronze in Trafalgar square has a low copper ratio, causing the bronze inside to be lighter and cooler toned and the patina to be blacker and not green..
Patinas
https://www.pallasweb.com/blog/bob-atchisons-guide-to-bronze-patinas.html Chemical patinas
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patina Natural Patinas
Trafalgar square lions
http://www.speel.me.uk/sculptlondon/landseerlions.htm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nelson%27s_Column
How bronze sculptures are made
Specialism 