Original – Kaname and Kurosaki

Hi everyone, this is my take on the recently Artwar 5. The topic is creating a champion representing a country. My initial idea was to create a Hero fighting of enemies in future Tokyo. With greedy humans doing different experiments from necromancing, mass producing hollow catalyst to inject souls into it, preparing army to go for war, the results went horribly wrong. Defective souls gained conscious and rebelled against the humans, killing their creator and overturned the system. Infusing terror into civilian, taking control over regions and brought chaos upon Japan. Soon ,they raised up in the hierarchy and dominated the humans, they called themselves [GHOSTS].

Ghosts began to terrorize the country. Most adults were captured by the Ghosts for labouring. The hard working students stood together and began their plan to overturn the Ghosts. They researched for a very long time but soon found out that their efforts were in vein until a mysterious man came out of nowhere and introduced them her grand daughter. The grand daughter pulled out her scythe and powerful aura began emitting from her, a tall and strong figure appeared beside her, introducing himself as [DEMONS] and will offer their help to fight against the Ghosts in return of some rewards. She demonstrated her power and impressed the students. The students found hope and began learning from the grand daughter.

Time passed very quickly, most of Japan were dominated by Ghosts except for a few districts with High Schools. High school volunteered to train and produce team of students who are able to fight against Ghosts, they called themselves the Anti-Ghost Elite (AGE), their priority was to fend off the Ghosts and bring humanity back. In order to become a member of AGE, they will have to borrow powers from the demon by exchanging portion of their lifespan. Once the contract was done, the bond between the host and the demon will be formed, the host will be able to wield her partner weapon. Before they were sent out to fight, the host will have to undergo training to improve their stamina and get to know their partner.

And here comes Hoshizora Kaname [星空奏愛] and Kurosaki Hime [黒崎姫], they were the characters I created for this universe. A second year high school girl with 2 Katanas and a Captain of Mirai High AGE team. In summary, she was strong because firstly, she was one of the few students who has 2 partners and one of them was one of the thirteen strongest demons, Kurosaki Hime. Secondly her strong will and skill made her one of the youngest Captain. Her desire to prevent others from having the same nightmare experiences she been through and bring back the peaceful Japan she once loved so much. Kurosaki saw the hope in Kaname’s eye and decided to lent her her power, lighting the path for Kaname. And also Kurosaki found Kaname cute, that’s why she decided to become her partner and gave her fox ears and tail, part of her fetish.

The images below are the my work in progress on how I brought them to life from my concept.

I started with blocking-in in zbrush, getting the form and proportion right with worrying about small details. I then decimated the high res model and import them into blender and to re-topologize.

After modeling all the weapons and accessories, I UVed them, separating the UVs into hair, head, armor and dress, firstly to make sure every part had sufficient texture space, Secondly was to future proof the model, just in case I wanted to create different outfit for her, I wouldn’t have to worry after re-UVing head and hair again. Once I’m done with the UV, I and import them into Substance Painter and started texturing.

Hahaha, I am quite impressive with my textures. This motivated me as I process to rigging and posing. There are actually nothing for me to show. I just followed the blender rigging tutorial I brought online. After basic posing, I then design the diorama for them. The images below will show the progress on the design of diorama, creating the diorama, lighting the scene and finally to the rendered and composited.

Rendering and compositing were done in blender. The rendering looked amazing using blender’s Eevee however the compositing side of blender have much to improve on. I was using Nuke to composite last time, it took me a while to get used to blender’s compositing as feathering was not part of the masking nodes.

Hence, my project comes to a end. Regardless whether I win or lose in Artwar 5, I enjoyed the challenge very much. I was able to learn new techniques, squeeze my creativity and pushed my skills to higher limit. Thank you cubebrush for hosting artwar, I have been participating in the previous one and I know where my skills were among the other talented artists. I hope to further improve on myself before Artwar 6 comes.

The images below will be some beauty shot and character sheets.

Thank you everyone for reading, hope you like these 2 characters as much as I do. There are still some stories on the adventures of Kaname and her 2 partners. I did developed some story ideas for her second Katana and how the contract rituals went. 🙂 Hope to see you next time.

munhouiscreative 3D Generalist / Compositor

Original – Kaname and Kurosaki

Share this: