Original – Illya and Reina
Hi all, this is my new project featuring both my Original Characters. The red is Illya while the blue is her sister, Reina. Illya was originally created for one of my school projects back in 2013, she was a Japanese doll back then. Since my modelling skills have improved over the years, I attempted to remodel her. To my surprise, Reina and her turned out really mesmerising. Here’s a comparison.
Compared to her past, she looks more human and elegant now. She even has fox ears and tail. She can even wield a katana now. I did added some backstories for Reina and her. The story begins.
In 21st century, dolls are no longer scary and are used for soul keeping or sacrifices. Many people tends to buy dolls mainly because of their cuteness.
Emperor intents to get a life-sized doll for his daughter’s birthday. Since most of baseline dolls are just few inches tall, getting a life-sized will be unique. He went and look for the famous doll maker, Tsuchimikado-san.
Tsuchimikado-san’s shop has been operated for past centuries. They produced excellent and fine-looking dolls. The Emperor took interest in one of the dolls which is locked in a glass cabinet at the center of the shop. The doll wears fancy Gothic dress which captured every customers’ attention. Ancient writings and drawings can be found written on the tatami beneath the glass cabinet. The locked doll and emperor exchanged their sight, Emperor can feel that the doll is alive and wanting to break out of the glass cabinet.
Tsuchimikado-san immediately led Emperor to his workshop and offered to help him in preparing for princess’s birthday present.
Days before princess’s birthday, Emperor visited Tsuchimikado-san again. He brought out two dolls, Illya and Reina for Emperor to inspect. Emperor went ahead and take a closer look at the new dolls. He looked them in the eyes and rejected both of them. Emporer insisted of having the doll in the glass cabinet. He told Tsuchimikado-san that the newly made dolls were professionally made with human-life features and high level of details but none of them feels alive. He then offered to purchase the doll in glass cabinet for a very high price.
Despite Tsuchimikado-san’s continuous warning, Emperor handed a huge sum of money to him and took the doll back to the palace. The princess was delighted. She liked the doll very much, pretty much bringing her where ever she go. From dinning to dressing room and her favourite garden. The cursed doll then used this to her advantage and cast mind control spell on princess every night when both of them were sleeping together. Out of no where, the princess propose to Emperor, cloning copies of the doll and gave them to the key holders as present, rewarding them for their service.
The dolls were cloned quickly and were sent to each key holders. Things began to change, there were an sudden increase in taxes, crimes rates and illegal activities around the country. Cursed doll was worried that Tsuchimikado-san might get her way of conquering the country and turning humans into slaves. She sent soldiers to finish off Tsuchimikado.
News spread fast to the Tsuchimikado as his friend worked in the palace. He found something was amiss and immediately went his workshop and transferred his remaining soul into Illya and Reina using soul-recollection device. He collapsed right after. Soldiers began to ransack the shop with their weapons, some even bought torches with them. Illya was awakened due to the loud ruckus. She immediately pull a kanata out from her arsenal and started disabling all the soldier dolls.
Even though she was able to take down most of the soldiers, there were too many reinforcements. Illya was pinned against the wall, dropping her katana and tried to scream. But no sound was heard due to she was unable to control her body fully. Upon hearing her struggle, Reina was fast awaken, she immediately casted holy blast on her arrow fired it off towards the soldiers who were surrounding Illya. The arrow flashed so brightly that it blinded everyone. After the lights went off, all the soldiers dropped onto the ground. Both of them quickly rushed to the Tsuchimikado-san and checked on him.
Tsuchimikado did not show any sign of respond so Reina decided to draw out his conscience using her spell. They were then tasked to restore world peace by taking down the cursed doll before she fully takes over the country. Their adventure begins.
So this is my base story for creation of Reina and Illya. They are the elegant and cute doll heros who are going to save the country. Let me introduce them properly. Both are dolls created by Tsuchimikado and have conscience after Tsuchimikado transferred his soul into them. They are able to think and act like what most humans can do. Both are ‘born’ on 22nd July just before midnight, Reina gained her conscience before Illya but she could not control her body on time and Illya awake first. Reina is still the older sister. Illya finished transferring on 23rd July after midnight which make her the younger.
Here are their biography.
Oh yeah, both of them are created in human form so none of them have fox ears or fox tails. The accessories are there because Reina likes to look cute and likes dressing Illya up.
After I am done with my character designs, I went into zbrush and start sculpting. This video will show my zbrush progress and some render shots.
Like the video? I spent multiple hours working on it and hope it turns out great. I re-watched it a few times myself. 🙂 These are the final images, all of them are composited in nuke.
Here are the modelsheets.
Weapons were initially created in Maya and brought over to zbrush for smoothing. Poses were also made in Maya as well. Everything was then detailed and rendered in zbrush. I intended to bring over to keyshot for realistic render as I was worried that keyshot will not be able to handle both of them so I dropped that idea.
This is a mini daily life manga/comic I created to showcase some of their personalities. Enjoy~ And please look forward to my new projects. Hope you like the both of them.
munhouiscreative 