CG character creation is fun. End of statement! Occasionally you come up with something (someone!) you're really, really pleased with -- and this is one of them. Call him Dimitri ...
I stumbled over this face and form when I was playing with the character of "the vampire Amadeus." I'd wanted to tweak the old face, make it a bit more unique, a bit less "idealized," but I guess I went too far with the tweaks, because by the time I was done, it was on its way to being a great face but it surely wasn't Amadeus anymore! Here's the work in progress:
From here, I changed the skin map and hair, did a few minor adjustments, and then put him into a sort of medieval setting. Turns out, Amadeus has a kind of "evil twin," the Loki of this family (a vast, ancient vampire clan) who causes nothing but trouble and everyone else has to sort out matters before it's war between the great vampire houses, over the last 2000 years, right? Neat idea, actually! A vampire with a sense of humor...
Same character, outside the tavern, with a "day for night" filter added in Photoshop to give you the impression it's night (same principle that's used in TV, when they shoot during the day with a filter on the camera). I like this character a lot.
The other experiment I ran today was in painting a displacement map to age a character by adding wrinkles to his face. Skin maps are usually imaged from very young models, meaning there isn't a mark on their juvenile faces, which may or may not suit the role you're casting. So...
If you have a look at this guy at large size, you will see lines in his face. Uh huh. This was done by painting lines (!) onto one of the facial skin maps, saving it back and applying it as a displacement map. It, uh, works. I need to go in and paint lines into the neck mapping too, because this guy still has the smooth teenage neck of the original skin map. But the face worked well.
Too hot to do more today. This place is sizzling, and I'm going to shut down the computers before they cook.
