Jora | Devpost

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Who is Jora?

Jora is a character I created for an art demo/game I'm currently developing, titled "Jora and the Four Seasons". Every 4 years, the Queen Bee of the kingdom of Chrysanthia hosts the Four Seasons Gala, where the 4 sages of the seasons, called The Four Seasons, come together and celebrate to ensure prosperous weather for the next 4 years. The young wizard Jora, whilst pondering his orb, discovers that there’s a disturbance in the seasons, and if this ball goes on with the sages in this state, the next 4 years will be wrought with horrible weather. Jora is very big into outdoor seasonal sports, and is mortified at what this would entail for the next 4 years! And imagine the mid-video game power outages… Unbearable! So, Jora decides he has no other choice but to begrudgingly venture to the capitol, Bloomberg, and solve this himself. The game revolves around Jora going around town and solving each of the Sage’s requests to help them get ready for the gala, which leads him to getting roped into all of the town’s affairs. Jora is not really a people person, but learns the value of community after his time in Bloomberg.

The Recipe

I created this model in ZBrush, using a blockout workflow that revolves around creating an easily editable body with multiple subtools for each muscle group. After the body and face were finalized, I started creating and sculpting out the clothes. Clothing simulations and I became BEST friends... and by that, I mean it worked like 5% of the time, but that 5% cooked for real. After the clothing was finished, I began to pose Jora and sculpt his expression. That process was certainly an adventure... but I think the pose turned out alright! Finally, I brought him into Substance for texturing.

ZSphere Rig: 1 Me: 0

As I mentioned above, this was the first posed character I've ever modeled. The ZSphere rig I made didn't work, so I ended up having to resort to cutting off parts of the character, moving and sculpting on them separately, then putting them back together. Also, poly count was a bit of a hassle, but I managed to get it down to an acceptable amount.

Accomplishments

Honestly? I think Jora slaps. He's kind of the crown jewel of my portfolio right now. It hasn't even been a year since I started seriously 3D modeling, and I'm really satisfied with how this model turned out, as well as the progress I've made as a modeler.

Learning experiences

I learned how to use height maps on this model! I went a little crazy with them too... The gold trim on the hat, cloak, and undercoat were all created using height maps, as well as all of the details on the shoe mesh (shoe laces? height paint. lacing holes? height paint. etc) and the trim and buttons on the overcoat. Also, I found out that a little dirt goes a long way; I used dirt generators on almost every texture surface to add more depth and realism.

What's next for Jora?

I've got a game to finish! This is actually a spruced up version of his current in-game model, so I need to go back and try to replicate those details... but that, as the kids say, is a problem for another day.