Caricature Study
A 3D caricature of myself, made as a space to explore new skills and push my workflow further.
Sculpting, particle systems, material nodes and texture painting, mixed together and pushed to see how far each one would go. A small project that taught me a disproportionate amount.
Sculpting
The first challenge was going deeper into Blender’s sculpting tools, trying to capture and exaggerate my own features in 3D. It turned out to be a surprisingly enjoyable process: observation and experimentation at the same time, and it pushed how I understand form.
A bit heavy on my computer at times, but worth it.
Hair
Getting the hair to mimic my own was its own challenge. Another power-heavy step, and plenty of trial and error. I got to a result I was happy with, but it is clearly the area with the most room left in it.
Procedural materials
How I love this process. Using nodes to build up the feel of skin, one calculation over another, is genuinely satisfying.
With enough of them overlapping I ended up with what feels like my first fully developed procedural material: pores, and colour that shifts across the surface instead of sitting flat on it.
Eyes
The eyes became a whole project of their own. Getting anywhere near realistic turned out to be far harder than I expected. In the end I came out of it with a solid standalone model of my own eyes, which is more than I set out for.
None of this had a brief, a client or a deadline.
Which is exactly why I got to be greedy about what I learned from it.
