Making Of - Baby Batman & Robin

"Alessandro Cornaglia (alias Alcorn) us to the discovery of his personal vision of Batman and Robin, where, with a masterly management of tools, modeling and programs, takes us on a journey of shapes, colors, lights and fantasy!  Happy reading!"
 
INTRO

Hello to all the community treddi.com! I wanted to share with you the path that led me to the final image (which you can find here) delivered to the contest Baby Comics.

As a preliminary stage (which I consider very important), I tried to arrange the work in blocks, and to take the time needed to develop a clear idea of what I wanted to achieve and how to achieve it, as much as possible to avoid surprises and changes of direction.
 
 
SCULPT and MODELING

After downing a sketch of the maximum depth of the characters and a little anatomy of the body of the children, are passed to the collection of references and shape (directly within ZBrush and dynamesh) the general shapes of the first character, the baby Batman.



In the definition of the forms are started from a low-resolution block dynamesh from which I extracted the general forms with the Move brush and then go to define progressively with brushes ClayBuildup, Standard & Flatten (used brushes from here onwards are always indicated in 'picture), increasing the resolution of the dynamesh as they increased the need for detail.

I decided for ease of shaping the body as if it were apparent already compressed by the clothes. Once you have reached a sufficient level of detail, are passed to the model by retopology zsphere, reprojected details on the new model and went on to detail the face. Then with transpose master I gave a rough pose to the model in order to work on the costume.



Gloves, boots, pant and mask were extracted directly from the model retopology; for gloves and boots then once detailed have been duplicated, mirrored and adapted to the other limb. To model the cloak I left a ball dynamesh, which I carved as a mold from which they extract (always through retopo) the party to be used as a cloak. The boundary and instead made ​​starting from simple shapes and sculpting progressively details.




Once extracted and completed all the accessories, I split the head from the rest of the body (the seam hidden under the mask of course), softened shapes and began to sculpt the folds of the suit.




At this point, with the pattern of maximum completed, I exported everything and began to set the scene; completed the preliminary concept of a first render, and began to define framing, basic lighting and pose of the other characters through dummies zbrush.


 
Final corrections on the model (pose and face that does not satisfy me in full), with uv unwrap master and polypaint basic (I then finished the textures in photoshop) to complete the Baby Batman.




Once completed Batman, are divided by the model just retopo to extract basemeshes the other 2 characters in the scene. I chose to start from the model already built (which I duplicated to have a direct comparison), to maintain similar anatomical relationships; especially the size of the head and limbs to the torso of the body in which children act as guides to define the age.



Reported in the model dynamesh Batman I started to remove the fat and redefine the proportions a bit (mainly with brushes and Move ClayBuildup) to get the model of Robin. I resculpted grossly anatomy (even if the model was dressed) to make sure of the same operation and proportions, and once satisfied, I used the same process (this time starting from the model of Robin) to get to BaseMesh used for Joker. Once you are sure of the proportions I exported individually basemeshes to be able to work on a separate file.

The development of the other characters is done in a similar way to Batman (eccezzion made ​​for the base of the clothes, that being the most complicated of the tights Batman I made with the model still Tpose, to then be finished in the folds of the fabric once struck a pose on the model).

Here the processing stages of Robin, from the base of detailed dynamesh (this time I used it for retopo Zremesher, which allowed me to save quite a bit 'of time) extraction of basic clothing and accessories; commissioning pose of the character, trying to trace the pose of the mannequin previously used in the composition of the scene.


 

As for Batman, to complete the model I unwrappato and realized a basic polypaint. To make the hair I preferred the fibermeshes rather than sculpt, to keep the tone semi-realistic characters.

Unfortunately, the Joker, having worked on a single file, overwriting the previous work, it remains only the final file. The procedure for realization in each case was the same as the Robin. Here is the finished model in clay and polypaint.


 
 
RENDER E POST

Once you have defined the frame and the base of the scene, I began to shape the roof of the police station and the city ... The character models have been exported without paying much attention to the polycount, so as to avoid displacement and use only the normal map for the finer details.
 
The modeling of the city and very simple, for most of the buildings are started from a cube to which I applied the texture of a facade to use as a base for them with cuts and extrusions I pulled out the general shape of the building, and unwrap reapplied correctly previously used the same texture as a base. To simplify the work and lighten the scene I made extensive use of multipliers for repeated details.

The scene is illuminated by an infinite light and very light with very soft shadows lying behind the characters, to which I added an area that does not affect the illumination light (diffuse amount set to 0), it helps to accentuate some reflections marking the boundaries of the characters.

On the right of the spherical area lights (to simulate the light of the street lamps) with warm color that are the source of illumination of the 3 main characters, and on the left a light purple color support area of lower intensity, so you do not have shadows too but without removing dark depth to the scene, and give a little variety of color lighting

Bridge and buildings are illuminated from below (always light area) to give the idea of lighting the town, while the lighthouse I used the fog setting enviroiment gizmo as a cylinder, to give an idea of the light beam.





The shaders in the scene are very simple, having tried to do as much as possible through the textures (dirt, bugs, etc.) to be lighter on the scene, leaving the care of a few details to the post.



In the post I replaced the sky that I had used as a base for lighting (hdri set as to set the tone of color to the scene but without impacting too much on lighting), further soiled buildings / roof / objects; simulated moisture / dust with radial gradients of very light on the lights, and then I moved on to give a tone "vintage" all image with color correction, bleach bypass and a bit of chromatic aberration.
 
 
And here's the final image with which I participated in the contest



 
For more information about the author, see HERE
 
Author: Alessandro Cornaglia
Title: Baby Batman&Robin
Modeling: ZBrush, Cinema4D
Post Processing: Photoshop
 
Portfolio: http://alcorn.treddi.com/
email: a.corn@tiscali.it