Upon researching Genndy Tartakovsky who is an Award-winning Animation visionary, has produced several iconic shows ranging from both 2D and 3D. For instances, I’ve known his works since the creation of classic cartoon Star Wars: The Clone Wars, Power Puff-Girls (yes even this) and Samurai Jack. His art style consists of stylized but exaggerated block shapes.
What I love about his works especially Samurai Jack (Season 5) is how it’s executed, it uses “Show, don’t tell”, emphasis on actions, ambient sounds and music to set the rhythm. His latest works called “The Primal” follows its predecessors footsteps.
When researching Hotel Transylvania, I have looked over several artworks and sketches by Genndy and Carter Goodrich. I used the Frankenstein monster as my model basis.
Before starting blocking out my character, I’ve sketched out an early version of what my character would be. Before deciding to scrap some portions, mainly it doesn’t usually follow my PureReferences images.
In this early stages I’ve started my first blocking, although as explained above this version was scrapped and went with the second block. This version is much more stubby, bulkier and blocky.
Upon near sculpting completion, his head has undergone multiple iterations. I decided to cut most of it entirely and slap in with simple rounded turban helmet. But of course this models striking feature is the absolute chin. Which is seen when I’m painstaking retopologizing the body.
When the process is done, I set-up a basic armature for rigging and added weight paints mainly on the characters torso armour. In addition, I added a hammer / mallet as his weapon. To be honest I could’ve put more effort into this but the main goal is simple posing where it matters (upper body).
I’ve exported both the Mesh and UV model into substances painter and back into Blender using the add-on tool “Node Wrangler”.
The results:
Overall, I could’ve honest put-up a much better work when creating this. The main limitations I have is the lack of use with weight painting and not knowing how to use it, especially with the time constraints and Blender decidingĀ to flip the switch and changes the overall workspace with updates. Retopologizing is tedious but I got the hang of it manually, without using add-ons.
References:
https://www.sonypicturesanimation.com/our-team/filmmakers/genndy-tartakovsky
https://livlily.blogspot.com/2012/12/hotel-transylvania-2012-character-design.html