By: Ricardo Viana

3D character artist Ricardo Viana created the orangutan boxer “Angry Banana” with Primate and Sportsperson using ZBrush, Substance Painter and Blender.

Tools:

ZBrush, Substance Painter and Blender, Cycles Renderer

introduce

In this tutorial, I will go through the process of making an athletic primate, the boxer Angry Banana, and introduce some of the techniques and creative ideas used to make it. In addition to shapes and colors, I also focus on the design and creation of posture. Beyond that, I’ll give you a few quick hints about textures and rendering/lighting, and hopefully you’ll learn something from making this character.

The model was eventually rendered using Blender’s Cycles Renderbus.

Other Works by author

Looking for inspiration

Before the project started, everything was aimless and chaotic, so I had to customize a theme and then look for something to reference around it. Current options include canine/primate athletes or pilots.

I prefer dogs to primates. But I wanted to make a bipedal animal character that could stand up, so monkeys and orangutans for primates would be a good choice. And I love the long arms of orangutans and the faces of monkeys, especially their long faces and arms, which should be very interesting to make. So I started looking for as many interesting shapes and expressions as I could around orangutans and monkeys.

The reference version uses PureRef storage, and at this stage I was looking for interesting feelings rather than shapes and colors per se.

Study shapes and contours

In this step, I started the first stage of research. After getting the right references, I felt that the combination of them was very interesting, and I wanted to convey that interesting feeling into my work. With this in mind, I first roughly sculpted the main shape of the monkey in ZBrush.

Of course, this step can also be made in other engraving software or 3D software, but please remember that this step does not take too much time, we just need to perfect the image of the reference image.

Model to sort out

Once the model meets the desired requirements, you can begin to design the rest of the model. Also, the model has been stylized and adjusted, and now it looks as complete as I imagined. Then you can clean up the model and make the character’s appearance more concise. In my opinion, stylization and simple appearance are two qualities that make for good character design.

To be continued…

Stay tuned for creating a Gorilla Boxer using ZBrush, Substance Painter, and Blender (2).

Related reading recommendations:

Corona renderer noise reduction example introduction!

How do I use and set up the noise reduction processor in Corona?

Interview on The Making of Rubon III The First: The Joys and Challenges of Turning a classic 2D series into CG (part 1)