Interview with Chris Nichols

Please tell something about your work “Cthulhu”, from where you get the inspiration and idea to create this character? Please tell us in detail about the process involved in creating such character?

I was asked by Pixologic to present at the ZBrush user event back last November. Fortunately I had just come off Invictus and had some free time to dedicate to it. I was asked to use the latest beta of ZBrush to create something from start to finish so dug up an old concept I had done. Cthulhu is a creature described by the sci-fi writer, H.P Lovecraft in his book Call of Cthulhu and describes him as being an ancient alien that lies beneath the ocean and will one day rise to destroy the earth. Cthulhu is described as big as a mountain with a bloated body and squid like face and was the embodiment of terror itself. So I flipped that idea on its head and made him tiny and cute.

First I cut up a simple base mesh, remodeled parts of it and made the head separate from the body. I took these polygon objects into ZBrush and started sculpting out all the forms, not focusing too much on the details but really just blocking out the shapes and getting the anatomy how I wanted it. I took it back into Maya and retopologised it with Nex, then took that back into ZBrush to project all the details back onto. Bit more sculpting work getting the wrinkles, surface details and such into the model then started to pose it using Transpose.

I used Polypaint in ZBrush to block out the textures and refined them using Photoshop using photographs of fruit and vegetables skins and then refined it even further back in ZBrush using screen captures to Zapplink to Photoshop. This was mainly used for getting fine details into dense areas of the mesh like the head bumps and shoulders. Finally I made a base for him in ZBrush using alphas and the Flakes brush to create a rocky surface with lots of barnacles and shells. I lit it back in Maya and rendered with mental ray using various passes. Photoshop was used for compositing and post effects.