Behold.. Johann van Grosso

(if you don't enjoy YouTube, there is a Vimeo version as well).

August 2009, right after being rejected from the Durian Project.
I applied as many others to be part of this amazing adventure the Blender Institute was starting, but gotta face it, my "portfolio" couldn't show more than a bunch of cute n' cartoony characters..

Also at that time I was finishing Venom's Lab!, so neither had time to create something specific for it, so decided to go blind and start modeling a human head from scratch, with no real photo references (bad move!).

The making..

Started with the eyes, modeling the circle around the eye from one side and then continued extruding, "drawing" the main lines of the face, this got a lot of changes afterwards but helped me stay in the right track from the beggining.

What a good excercise this is! I recommend it to everyone, specially how to avoid ugly poles is one of the biggest issues.
You get to learn a lot about the flow of lines in our face, translating this into edgeloops is tricky.
Best way to learn this is to get a mirror and do silly faces to it, watch yourself doing extreme expressions, an extremely happy or extremely angry face is the best, try things like blocking your nose-holes with your lips! :D move *all* the muscles on your face to see how they all flow.

Next time I'm definitely using real photo references, or at least more mirrors to look me at (although I doubt I'm the best reference)

What are you staring at? smile dude!

Johann's process, pointing out the main issues in the first attempt, and shaping it afterwards to give him a badass look and personality :D

Let's get epic!

OK not *that* epic, lets find a way to make him look like in an epic scene, without pushing it too much :D.
Best way to achieve this was to take a render of him to an image manipulation software (in this case GIMP).

I knew there is a snowy scene in Durian, and I also like snow and blizzards ((I'm Patagonian! :) , so decided to go for that style which I never did before, layering some noise effects and painting a little bit gave me a quick glance of what I was looking for, so easy! no long renders waiting or anything, so decided to continue on this path and keep adding effects I would like to have on the final product.

Of course bringing this to Blender was the challenge, but nothing the compositing nodes couldn't do! :D

Fun part! layering effects in the GIMP to make this concept art.
The background is a photo I took when in the Swiss alps (Rochers de Naye) :)
Click here or on the image to download the GIMP (.xcf) file. ~11mb

How did you make Johann? dunno go play with the sources and guess! :D

• Download Johann van Grosso here. ~25 mb .ZIP, packed .blend file (all textures included).
• Works well on Blender 2.51 (alpha 1), grab the latest Blender for your platform at GraphicAll.org.
• This is my last working version, maybe it doesn't render the same, but it may have some additions.
• I did not prepare this blend file very carefully :) so there might be stupid naming, hidden stuff, who knows.. don't complain as there is no support for it, I'm just giving it away.

So why are you giving it away?

I believe in the freedom of knowledge, there is no better way to learn than by sharing.

License

Johann van Grosso is released under the Creative Commons Attribute 3.0 license, means you can study, copy, share, improve and share again!, as long as you give proper attribution to: Pablo Vazquez | www.venomgfx.com.ar.