Context
While learning how to work in 3D, I’ve stumbled upon CG Boost, a website dedicated to producing quality tutorials for Blender (their tutorials can also be found on YouTube).
The character on the right is my entry into one of their monthly 3D competitions. The month’s theme was “Samurai”, and I chose to distance myself from the traditional view on the subject and create a more modern makeshift approach.
My workflow
Due to the fast paced nature of the project, I’ve taken many shortcuts when it came to creating it. The first one was posing a character in DAZ Studio for the base mesh, after which I considered creating the clothes in Marvelous Designer, but it turned out to be too slow to do so. Finally, I’ve modelled all elements by hand in zBrush, except for the swords, which were easier to create in Blender.
Because I’ve been focused on finishing the project as fast as possible I may have not noticed that the katana is supposed to be held differently (with it curving downwards), but taking into consideration the way he’s dressed, one could say that he might not care.
Fun fact: the most infuriating and time consuming thing that I did for this project — by far — was to create the Sageo (the knot around the sheathe of the katana) since I didn’t want to just fake it and had spent time looking up tutorials on how to tie it properly.