Game On: Art: Character Brief: The Captain

When texturing, I tried to keep a clean, stylized look, still adding enough details to give the character dimension and story, but not as much as a realistic style piece would have. I drew inspiration from different stylized works, mainly Overwatch and some Fortnite characters.

For the skin, I started with a base colour, added some ambient occlusion using two fill layers with a black mask and a mask editor (one for wider, softer shadows and one for the finer, stronger shadows), then some edge highlights (especially on the nose and edge of the eye) in the same way. I lowered the layer opacity and added a slight blur so it wouldn't look unnatural. I used a pink layer with a black mask for the more vascularized areas of the face (mainly the cheeks and a tiny bit on the nose). I added some around the eyes as well, since I wanted to achieve the "haven't slept for days" look. With a purple layer and a blur effect I painted over the jaw and chin area, as well as under the eyes for some eyebags. I painted some more shadows around the eye to make it pop more, but not too much as I didn't want it to look like make-up. With a layer with only roughness turned on, I painted over the shinier areas of the face, where there is more sebum production and hence, makes the skin a bit glossier: nose, cheeks and forehead (it's not visible here though). Of course, on a stylized character I exaggerated it a bit and also added some on the lips.

For the metal on the helmet, I kept things simple: I wanted it to have that painted kind of look, so I used a grunge procedural with a blur slope to achieve it. I added some roughness using procedurals and colour variation using a layer with a white mask and a light generator. I added ambient occlusion and edge highlights using mask editors, as well as some rust. The copper was made in the same way, just different colour.

For the clothes, I kept the pants simple, adding ambient occlusion and some edge highlights, as well as some colour variation using a light generator on a fill layer with a white mask, something I've noticed in a lot of stylized characters. For the clothes I did something similar, but used one of the smart materials in substance painter as base and modified it to fit my vision. For the metal bits I used the same metal from the helmet and for the leather I used a cell procedural on a height layer in order to get the leather texture.

I used Mixamo to pose my character, though I had to edit some of the skinning manually, as some pieces of the metal leg were deforming unnaturally. I then brought everything into Unreal, made the emissive bits and lighted the scene. I also made the eyeball texture in Substance Designer and implemented it using parallax occlusion mapping. I kept it simple, to fit the stylized character.