Lady Death Fanart Collectible: Part 3 Clothes section 1

Hi there! it’s me, Rob Zepeda.
It’s been a while since my last entry, my wife and me moved to a diferent home and there were lots of things to arrange, store in boxes, and rearrange etc.
In this third post I’ll be sharing more of the process for creating Lady Death, a fanart collectible statue

First of all I want to mention that I have great respect for the original design created by Brian Pulido, nevertheless with this fanart I want to give a different look to the character, I think of her more as a warrior and huntress than just as a femme fatal that wears a tiny bikini with long boots and gloves.

In my mind I imagine that she had to gather some leather, by killing animals and hellish creatures, and the metal ornaments could have been forged by Cremator, a master blacksmith that was vanished from Lucifer’s kingdom.

Disclaimer: To be honest I haven’t read a single Lady Death`s comic, my main approach to the lore was the 2004 animated film directed by Andy Orjuela. It may have some differences with the comic story, but it was the easiest way for me to have a better understanding of Lady Death’s universe.

Bra

For the black leather piece I used the classic approach of masking parts of the breasts and extracting with a thin thickness. Some Zremeshing, fixing polygons and polish by features were simple enough to get this piece.

The straps that conect the chest and neck were created with a single curve brush created by myself; at this point I didn’t think it would be useful to buy a pack with strap IMM curve brushes, also I wanted to understand how curve brushes are created.

From the beginning I wanted to avoid metal flourish ornaments, I want to give a bit of aggressive look to the clothes. I took inspiration from some Goth accesories and garments, I’ve tried to give a more organic look to the pieces and using some bone elements, not only looks cool,but it reinforces the supernatural nature of this character.

The little skull and bony hands are part of a skeleton Imm brush that I bought years ago. By the way, if you feel a little envy for those skeleton hands, trust me, you’re not the first.

Bikini

Again masking and extracting allowed me to create the cloth piece for the bikini, my trusty strap Imm curve brush helped me to add a sexy touch and also will connect the bikini with the boots.

Not wanting to leave just like that the bikini, I decided to create some ornaments to add a bit of salt to this piece.

As you probably know, for my first blog entry, this figure was posed from the beginning so I don’t have the possibility to sculpt with simmetry. I thought that it would be very useful to use a DAZ 3d model in T or A pose that allowed me to work with simmetry and later I would have only to adapt those pieces to the posed figure.

I opened DAZ studio brought a Genesis 8 female model and reshape her in order to have a similar body type of that in my zbrush posed sculpture. I rendered a front and a back view that allowed me to make some paintover to stablish the design of this ornamental pieces.

In this point I want to mention that I think is very important not to forget that as 2d or 3d artists we need to give a cohesive look to the piece, designing and experimenting is more time consuming that just directly painting or sculpting, but at the end of the day the time you invest in preliminary sketches will help you to reinforce the general message and look of the whole piece.

After completing a very simple sketch of the ornaments I returned to Zbrush to sculpt them. For the organic stuff like the skull in the center and the lateral bony fingerish pieces, the good old Move, ClayBuildup and Trim brushes were my best friends at this task.

For the hard surface pieces I decided to sculpt them only as sketches in zbrush, later I would import them as OBJ in Blender for modeling with better edges and topology. Hardsurface sculpting/modeling in Zbrush is something I don’t understand very much, to be honest I haven’t immersed myself in Zmodeler or other tools that other artists use to stay in Zbrush, which is super useful. I will definitely study more about the hard surface workflow in order to have a more efficient sculpting methodology.

I decided to eliminate the diamond lateral pieces since I didn’t like how they looked. Instead I used again a spike Imm brush, it looks cool and it gives consistency to the shape language along the different garments.

By the way, adapting the symmetrical pieces I modeled in Blender to the posed figure, was a bit more complicated than I expected in Zbrush.

Gloves

Masking, extracting, zremeshing and tweaking geometry helped me to get the gloves pieces.
I searched for some references at Pinterest to have a better understanding of folds and wrinkles, for the bra and bikini I didn’t worry about that but for the gloves I had to trust on the images I found and my observational skills.

Sculpting or drawing clothes is on of the most complex tasks because you have to understand the physics and how some materials behave when the body takes a specific pose.

If you are having difficulties with folds, wrinkles and how clothes behave, I really advice you to look for tutorials, Marc Brunet and Glenn Vilpu have amazing information regarding to the clothed figure.

The metal ring at the top of the gloves was done in Blender because I wanted to have sharp edges and I couldn’t get those inside Zbrush.

I have understood that my lack of knowledge with hardsurface modeling with Zmodeler and other tools is interrupting my workflow, I will definitely study and practice this subject.

Again I decided to create an Imm curve brush in order to add the metal diamonds around the ring, for the little skulls I used an Imm brush with lots of skeleton pieces.

Some details were added to the gloves, like a seam at the inner part of the arms with some stitches, once again I bought an Imm curve brush with stitches to save some time.
In order to add some flavor I attached some organic spikes that protude from the gloves, the idea is that those cloth pieces are made from the skin of a creature like a small dragon or some kind of an abyssal reptile, that explains the iguanas pictures in my mood board.

Thanks for reading and joining me in the adventure of sculpting my first collectible figure.
In my next entry I will continue to show you some of the process for the boots, the cape and texturing all the garments.
May Zbrush be with you.

Lady Death Fanart Collectible: Part 4 More clothes

Hi there! it’s me, Rob Zepeda.
In this entry I’ll show you some of the process of creation for the boots and cape.
Here are my main references.

Boots

I tried a different approach with this pieces by not starting them from scratch. Years ago I used and had some fun with DAZ 3D so I went to the main page looking if I could buy a pair of boots that aligned to the design I want for Lady Death’s clothing.
I did find a pair of boots with a lot of potential, so I bought them.

It was very important for me to consider two things by deciding to use items I didn’t model myself from the beggining.
1.-My figure is not in a T or A pose what allows me the use of symmetry, the legs have movement and a defined pose so I had to replicate that pose as close as I could to get the boots adapt to the model.
As a former DAZ user I loaded a Genesis 8 figure and posed her trying to emulate my Zbrush figure, then applied the boots. This is when point number 2 appears.

2.-Any DAZ user knows that those figures and assets are not perfect, they are a great starting point for saving some time but it’s mandatory to make adjustments. Unfortunately the geometry sometimes is streched or deformed in a way that doesn’t make sense. A clear example can be seen in the buckles and the holes for the laces (circled in green at the image).

Back in Zbrush I imported the boots and eliminated the straps. Obviously the dimensions and position of the posed boots weren’t the same as my figure’s legs, so a lot careful tweaking was necessary in order to match them with my character.

From the beggining my idea with the boots was that they were complemented with leather panels, as if they were part of a leather armor set.
In general terms I want to reinforce the concept of Lady Death as a supernatural being, she is a kind of queen from hell. For that reason I decided to add hooves to the boots, I think they add a bit of a badass demonic touch.

The hooves were sketched first in Zbrush and later modeled in Blender, I wanted clean topology and more controllable forms.

The leather panels were created by masking, extracting and zremeshing, for the borders I used a simple Imm curve brush.

To give some extra wrinkles to the boots I sculpted with the ClayBuildup brush, an Imm curve brush was used to add straps and buckles and finaly the small metal rings were created with an Imm Primitive brush. Also lots of adjustments were necessary to get decent non distortioned (stretched) laces.

Cape

The cape had to show movement and add some grace to the composition, I used Marvelous Designer in order to have wind blowing at it. I’ve never used dynamics for clothing inside Zbrush so I’m not sure if you can get this effect.

The topology I’ve got from Marvelous Designer wasn’t very good so I Zremeshed the cape and used the Move brush to modify some areas. Smooth and Claybuild up brushes allowed me to refine some folds and wrinkles to have a more pleasent look.

I can’t forget that this figure is going to be printed in my Phrozen Sonic Mini 8ks. This printer has a maximum z print size of 17 cms so I had to cut the cape in two pieces.
As I’m an absolute rookie to 3D printing I asked in the Discord group “ArtLegion” how could I make this pieces printable and I got some help.

The thickness at the center of the cape should be heavier in order to add a key that penetrates the other half, this not only allows to have a connection between both parts but also gives more printable material to the printer.

An important thing to consider is that I didn’t want to have a super thick cape, this would look bizarre because the cape, in my mind, would be composed of leather pieces, and leather is not super thick. To adress this, only the thickness at the center is heavier than the boarders, this method allows me to hide the heaviest thickness in a less visible area.

Finally I added some seams and stitches to give the impression that this cape is not a single piece. The idea is that the person that made the cape had to join several pieces of leather, in my mind it has a similar look of Catwoman’s suit in the film Batman Returns.

Thanks for reading up to this point and be a part of this creative jouney
I'll be posting more of this process.
May zbrush be with you.

Lady Death Fanart Collectible: Part 6 Polypaint and base

Hi, it’s time to share with you another part of the process to create this fanart piece.

Polypaint

As this is my first collectible fanart I didn’t have previous experience with polypaint so I tried my best and played a bit with it.
I wanted to give a ghostly and eerie look to Lady Death, she is beautiful and deadly, but at the end of the day she is a woman that died and was reborn at hell as an avenging spirit, that’s why I gave her skin tone a bluish very cold tone.
As you will see I gave myself some creative freedom to deviate from the traditional color scheme that this characater has in comics and illustrations.
To add a bit of sensuality by painting some freckles on the face and the chest.

The dark nature of this character was the perfect excuse to gave her a kind of goth make up, very dark shadows around the eyes, blue lips and fingernails. I know that the original character includes sexy red lips but I wanted this girl to have a sexy but at the same time creepy look, that’s why we can see some thin veins emanating from her eyes.

The biggest chromatic change I did for this character is at the hair. Lady Death has a characteristic white weavy hair but in my fanart I decided to gave her a very saturated blue color.
The reason behind this wasn’t only an aesthetic choice. I want that the face area strongly pulls the attention of the viewer so this area needed a stronger contrast. Another reason is that I want her to have a more modern look, as I mentioned before, I’m strongly attracted to women with goth/punk look.

I gave myself half an hour or more to analyse the work of experienced sculptors that create collectibles and I discovered that the use of darker values on the skin is often applied to create a greater sense of volume and three-dimensionality. I found that areas with heavy ambient occlusion are the perfect places to paint with darker colors in order to increase the separation between different forms.

Even though she has a bluish skin tone, I used a bit of warmer hues in areas that, in real life, tend to go towards red and pink, this is very obvious in the nose, cheeks, and knuckles.
Thinking with a logical mind it’s completely absurd to have warmer tones on the body of a zombie like creature but I didn’t want to limit myself by using only blue tones, it looks boring and artificial. In real life these colors are created by blood vessels in areas where the skin is very thin.

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Scythe

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for her weapon I applied a cool gray with some warmer variations, this color scheme is influenced by the work of H.R giger.

Base

I’d like to talk about the design for the base which, to be honest, I forgot to develop along with the character.
My main idea with the base is to show that Lady Death inhabits a very sterile and arid land, at the end of the day she is at hell.
You can see a that she walks over dirt and rocks, a sign that she’s surrounded by death and loneliness.

As part of the landscape we can see some bones and skulls to reinforce the idea of lack of living creatures, yet we can see three hands that try to reach her legs.
This hands represent that all creatures are subordinated to her power and seek an evil blessing with a simple touch of the princess of the damned.
1- The hand with skin burns represents the souls of those who are newcomers to hell, tortured souls that suffer for the sins comitted on earth.
2- The hand with greenish rotten skin and pustules is the reminder of the decay that has infected the souls of those who have been trapped and have forgotten their humanity
3- Last but not least, the hand of a demon shows that even dark creatures and entities bow before her presence.

The cherry on the top, at least in my vision, are the simese twins that emerge from the ground, this malevolent creatures remind us that in hell there’s only perversion and any trace of innocence is lost.

Thanks for reading till this point
I’m really happy to be very close to finish this creative journey, last but not least it’s mandatory to talk about splitting the sculpture in several pieces to be printed, this will be my last entry before showing the final rendered images.

See ya
May Zbrush be with you