The Eyes
For me, the most important part of a character is the eyes.
Unless you are representing a dead corpse, if the eyes do not look alive, you will ruin the entire piece. People look at each other's faces all the time and the main focusing point are the eyes. We are so used to observing eyes that if something is wrong in their representation we will immediately spot it.
I believe that there are the 9 essential points in the eyes' representation that have to be to nailed in order for your character to look alive:
a- Shadowline below the eye lid falling on the iris.
b- Bright highlight revealing the strong light sources – I have used and HDR image on the environment to achieve this.
c- Highly reflective cornea (not forgetting the Fresnel effect).
d- Reflection/Brighter area on the iris on the opposite side of the main highlight/reflection.
e- Smooth dark edge surrounding the iris.
f- Recessed Iris – The iris is not so recessed in reality, it is actually quite plane. However, by pulling back the pupil, we emphasize the refractive effect of the cornea and the liquid that exists inside the eye, instantly looking more alive.
g- Solid cornea – It is very important to model the cornea with thickness so that you can use an Index of Refraction and slightly distort what is behind it. In this case I have used an IOR of 1.4.
h- Milky sclera – The white of the eye has a milky look and shouldn't be represented as bright white. I have used the VrayFastSSS2 shader with subsurface scattering to achieve that look.
i-Wet look: Tear line in the contact area between cornea and eye lid – I have created a spline with thickness, converted it to Editable Poly and changed it's shape in order to achieve a watery look.
Composition - One trick I use to test the composition of a scene are “paint-overs”.
I bring an image into Photoshop and extend/crop the canvas size, twist it, paint new elements, change colors, etc. It is a quick and dirty method to preview changes. If I like them, I recreate them in 3D.
This is one of those tests. In this one I took some decisions like placing an ashtray near the character and a few framed paintings on the back. I have decided to flip the image horizontally because it works better as we read it from left to right. I have also added a little tilt to make the composition less static. The rabbit's eyes are at a one third distance from the top and from the right side in order to become the center of our attention.
In the final composition I had some trouble in order for the Mona Lisa not to compete with the rabbit in terms of attention. For that I had to let the rabbit's ear slightly overlap Mona Lisa's frame, so that it became obvious that the painting was behind the rabbit. Also, I have intentionally left Mona Lisa's eyes out of the picture to avoid having two pairs of eyes fighting for the viewer's attention.
Compositing - Photoshop was used for all the compositing. I had already made a lot of lighting and material tests in 3DSMax, as such I didn't find it necessary to create render passes to fine tune further the lighting, reflections, etc.
I have rendered 3 separate hair passes (body, snout, tail) by setting the “Composite Method” to None in the “Effects>Hair and Fur” window. I have rendered the base image with the hair shadows but without the hair by setting the “Composite Method” to Off in the “Effects>Hair and Fur” window. A Z-depth pass was also rendered and used to defocus the background with the “Lens Blur” filter in Photoshop. In addition to these I have rendered an occlusion pass using Mental Ray which I consider to have a far superior occlusion shader comparing to Vray's Dirt shader.
To finalize the image, I have painted some dirt marks on the wall and on the floor, painted the smoke in the air and coming out of the cigarette and added more light coming from the top right corner by painting over the image with the “Color Dodge” blending mode.
The technical aspects of a piece are important, but what really matters is the reaction it provokes on the viewer. I like humorous images and to make people smile. That was the main goal of this piece. I have introduced some secondary comic elements on the image like the smoking Mona Lisa or the Carrot earring, because it is fun for the viewer to find the jokes as he explores the image.
I am very happy with the way the final image turned out.
I hope you have enjoyed this article as much as I have enjoyed writing it!
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