With her favorite bag full of fun-colored notebooks, pencils, and…hamsters? Laila is *READY* for her first day of school!
When I first stumbled upon this adorable character by Estrela Lourenço, I instantly loved her. She is just so spunky and her hair! I just knew I needed to model her and I’m so glad I did.
This project taught me so much about my own modeling/sculpting workflow, FiberMesh hair, texturing, and just character design in general. I started the character in ZBrush and used a combination of dynamesh, polygroups, and ZRemesher to get the shape and topology as close as I could to what I wanted for final. Then I brought her into Maya for UV editing and posing with a very bareboned rig before finally bringing her into Substance Painter. I will continue to develop this workflow as time goes on but I’m very pleased with what I learned while working on Laila and her hamster bud.
You can view Estrela’s original piece and more of her beautiful work on her website and Instagram.
Original Character Design: Estrela Lourenço
3D Model and Visual Development: Salena Mahina
