The Year of the Dragon
Welcome to the Year of the Dragon!
One of the biggest and most interesting holiday around the world is the Lunar New Year. Like millions of people, we wanted to join the celebrations by creating this illustration featuring this mighty creature, who, according to the Chinese zodiac, will guide us this 2024.
3d Process
Ugly sketches
First, some ugly sketches and bad ideas need to get out. Sometimes the process doesn't need to look good, and that's OK as long as it serves its purpose, which in this case was to explore (very roughly) the chunky, bulky look of the dragon.
Sketch
Now, we polish the sketch a bit more and isolate the shapes that will need to be modeled in our preferred 3d software.
3D blocking vs. final modelling
Inside Maya software, we are still figuring out some shapes and the overall look of the dragon, as you can see in the left image below.
When we were happy with the 3d sketch, we work on the details until we are happy with our model! (right image)
Materials and Textures
We are almost done with our dragon! now we apply materials and test some colors. Then we jump into Substance Painter and just have fun with brushes, colors and textures to break up the light.
Time for collaboration!
We handled the dragon to our amazing friends Chabaski and El Chiak so they can complete the illustration with their unique view. This is the result!
Finally, we made the final adjustments to the illustration and the dragon. Just adding a bit of salt and pepper to make sure everything is balanced and that's it! We really enjoy working on this project. Hope you like it!
Thank you!
