You never forget the biggest milestones in life:
First time on a bike. First heartbreak. First time you conceptualized, textured, rendered, and properly lighted a digital orc creature.
You know, things every human must go through.
Well, you’ll find no advice here on bikes or heartbreaks but as to orc-building – Senior Character Artist Jared Chavez of Firewalk Studios has created an intimate and comprehensive series of Youtube tutorials on how to help guide you through your best orc.
First spotlighted by 80 Level in February, Chavez’s in-depth videos cover texturing, shading, and rendering of different types of digital creature characters and have drawn a sturdy and growing viewership. Chavez’s background is in gaming (he spent four years at Turtle Rock Studios working on characters for games like “Back 4 Blood”) and his tutorials reflect a deep knowledge of skin gradients and textures, sculpting hair and teeth, and even how to build the dermal layers of an alien character.
Now, these tutorials aren’t for a VFX artist looking to browse a 12-second flashy Tik Tok. These are half-hour to feature-length step-by-step trainings geared towards the artist looking for an experienced voice and some guidance as to how to develop their own digital workflow cadence.
Some of the niche tutorials you’ll find include “Lighting a character in Marmoset 4”, “Making hair and UVs in XGen and Maya ”, and “How to make a subsurface skin shader for game characters”. Working through the baseline of a competent orc design is a great fundamental – if you can successfully sculpt the cragged features of a fanged hobbit-hunter, you can transition this new skillset to so many other layered creatures that are like building a mountain from the bedrock on up to the surface foliage.
Yes, you too have the power to create the perfect orc.
From 2022’s Rings of Power. Photo credit: Prime Video
Jared Chavez’s character tutorials can be viewed here on the Jared Chavez Youtube channel.
