Nøkken Skeleton (Final Year Project)
A "realistic" portrayal of Nøkken, a creature from Norwegian folklore. The skeleton is now ready for display at your nearest natural history museum :)
The aim was to design and showcase a made up creature as if it had been found and dug up from an excavation site, with museum light, life-studies and a skeleton.
Every piece of the skeleton was sculpted from scratch by me in ZBrush, and then textured and rendered in Substance Painter and Unreal Engine.
I did make a fleshed out version of it, but made a lot of beginners mistakes so it didn't end up looking as good as I'd hoped (have since learned from my mistakes though!). That can be found in the YouTube video below.
(WIP's of the progress can be found on my artstation blog!)
Excavation site, the ground texture is from Quixel Megascans :)
Unreal Render
Unreal Render
Unreal Render
To further "sell" the idea that the creature could've existed, I made some life-drawing studies, heavily inspired by Leonardo Da Vinci's studies of horses.
Final Sketch. The creature can shapeshift into a woman in a white dress, so I thought it would be interesting to incorporate that somehow into the design, hence the folds on the neck.
Doing some tests with the head
Progress shot
Maya Render of the full low poly skeleton
All pieces where sculpted from scratch in ZBrush
(WIP's on my ArtStation blog)
Maya Render of the full low poly skeleton
WIP of texturing in Substance
3D Nøkken - Final Year Project (1080p HD)