Breakdown: Recreating Terrifier's Art The Clown With ZBrush

Introduction

I got into 3D back in 2003 when I saw a "how to" book for 3ds Max. It was an intermediate-level book, and it was really tough to go through the lessons. At the time, I didn't know any English, so it was extra challenging to navigate through the menus and figure out what was what. I was sort of going back and forth with 3D for the next several years and really got into it in 2011 when I went to the Digital Animation program at Centennial College, Toronto. The program was a sort of all-around introduction to 3D, i.e., simple modeling, animation, rigging, lighting/rendering, and compositing. 

I had to learn 3D sculpting in ZBrush pretty much by myself. It was the time when more and more online resources started being available. Also, ZBrushCentral had a very nice series of tutorials to get me started. I had to learn a great deal of anatomy to really feel comfortable sculpting what I want in ZBrush and I also did quite a bit of practical sculpting with clay that I feel really helped my 3D art. I definitely recommend doing some clay sculpting to any digital sculptor. I especially recommend Jordu Schell's classes on Stan Winston's school website on sculpting heads, bodies, and creatures. Also, I took a couple of workshops with Simon Lee on designing creatures and characters in clay.

I've contributed to many projects. I don't even remember all of them, but the one I liked the most was The Shape Of Water (2017); I was responsible for sculpting the main creature, reproducing it in great detail to match the practical suit. Then I've sculpted a lot of FACS-based blendshapes so the creature can have all the necessary facial expressions. Also, I worked on Hellboy (2018), Monster Hunter, Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, the upcoming Wednesday season 2 show, and other unannounced titles. I also worked on some collectible statues and toys, including Todd McFarlane's Kickstarter Spawn figures.

Nowadays, I work freelance as both a Production Artist and Concept Artist for VFX, games, and collectibles. Also, I recently launched my YouTube channel, where I share my workflows, tips and tricks, and much more.

The Terrifier Project

Terrifier was a really fun-looking character, and I'm a big horror fan. I wanted to just get a new quick project done to kickstart 2025. I wanted to practice sculpting clothes, and he's got a lot of loose fabric! My secondary goal/challenge was to use just ZBrush for texturing/rendering.

For references, I used the PureRef app, which I'm sure doesn't need any introduction. Such a great tool! To gather references, I used Google Images and X/Twitter. The director, Damien Leone, posted quite a few behind-the-scenes images that had the Terrifier character present in good lighting and from some good angles I needed. Realistically, you just need 3-5 good images to get the likeness right (front, side, 3/4, and a couple of extra angles).

Sculpting

I wanted to practice all aspects of sculpting, so I started pretty much from the sphere and moved from there. Mostly, I would mask an area (like the neck or shoulders), extract it, extrude it, and shape it into the body part that I need. It's a very free-flowing form of 3D sketching.

Basically, after I created the initial sphere for the head, the rest of the body and props were extracted from existing meshes by masking needed areas and extracting them. Then, used a combination of Move, Transpose, Clay, and Clip brushes and then DynaMesh to get the shapes done. I picked up that workflow from Rafael Grassetti, and it really resonated with me as it activates a more artistic part of my brain, I guess. I feel like you have to always experiment with new ways of sculpting familiar things, otherwise you might get too stagnant. Getting out of your comfort zone really forces your brain into a more creative state. 

In this case, I sculpted the suit right away without bothering with the body below it (anatomy was not the point of this exercise). However, normally, if I make the body first, I ZRemesh it and use that topology to extract the clothes I need; this way, all of them come with a nice topology right away!

The cowl was sculpted as part of the head at first, but as I adjusted the face and head proportions to my liking, I masked out the cowl area and extracted it. Here's an example with the hat, but here I've done a few extra steps to get the clean mesh out for the brim of the hat. I masked and extracted the area, then I used Ctrl +Shitt + Left Mouse click on top of the surface to isolate that top polygroup out of the extracted mesh. Then I deleted hidden polygons so that only one-sided topology was left. After that, I use Group Loops – Polish by groups if needed to get those nice rounded edges for the brim. Then I use ZRemesh to get a clean topology of that and then I use ZModeler brush to extrude all polygons. I use this workflow for most of the hard surface elements, the shoes were done the same way.

The axe was made the same way: I masked an area, extracted it, and shaped it into an axe using Move, Transpose, and Clip brush. Later, I used wood alphas made from wood grain photographs to get the final details on the axe handle. 

Topology

I used ZRemesh to create a simple topology and reprojected the mesh. I brought everything into RizomUV to get UVs done really quickly and then imported the models back into ZBrush. I used the RizomUV app to get UVs done very quickly. This was just to speed up the process. Of course, the same thing can be done in Maya or any other 3D software of choice.

After that, I used Character Creator 4 to make a quick rig and pose him up. This app was especially useful as I wasn't sure what pose I wanted to use, and I could easily explore many poses using CC4.

Clothes

After that, I did the final pass on the clothes and fixed mesh intersections I got from posing the character. I didn't use any cloth dynamics on the clothes; I just used a standard brush, DamStandard, masking, and Move/Transpose to get the shapes done. That part was a lot of fun. You just have to pay attention to the reference.

If the fold pattern is difficult to make out, it's a good idea to draw over reference pictures in Photoshop. It helps to figure out the structure simply. Then, just focus on sculpting.

Once the clothes were sculpted, I used the Surface – Noise to project fabric patterns on the clothes, using UV as the basis for the projections. For the cowl, I used regular noise, and for the rest of the clothes, I used custom tileable cloth patterns through the Noise tool. What I always do is turn off Mix Basic Noise, make sure that Noise is applied via UV, and then plug in one of the fabric alphas I have (I usually try a bunch before settling on my choice). Then, I fine-tune the tiling of the pattern by adjusting the Scale and clicking Apply. After that, I click Mask by Noise and use Inflate (positive or negative) to bring out the pattern as much as I need. Sometimes I'll go over with a standard brush over some areas to bring out the pattern more.

In the last stage of the sculpting process, I added blood. For the axe, it was the same old Mask – Extract – Shape it in.

For the blood on the clothes, I used the Remesh All feature with the resolution cranked up and X symmetry off. I used negative Inflate to bring the mesh under the surface of the clown sculpt and then used standard/clay buildup to bring out the blood pattern I wanted. You basically paint 3D blood on the top of your sculpt. Pretty fun!

After all this was done, I exported multiple passes using BPR render and comped them all up in Photoshop. At this stage, you want to render several images with the light coming from different directions, and then the rest of the passes would be materials you need for the comp: metal, glossy red for the blood, diffuse without reflections for fabric, etc.

Using flat shaders and solid colors, I prepared a clown pass that's really helpful in the comping process as it helps you quickly isolate different parts of the sculpture for masking. I used 3/4 light and two rim lights to make him pop against the background. I set those layers to Lighten/Lighten Color mode and tweaked the opacity to fit my needs. For other layers like shadow and dirt, I used Layers in Multiply mode. The dirt was done by basically using a color layer, lowering its brightness, and then painting into the mask with a dirt alpha brush.

Some dried-up blood was painted on in Photoshop in comp also with the layer set to Multiply. I could've done that step in Substance 3D Painter since the whole character already had proper topology and UVs, but since I was intentionally limiting myself to ZBrush and Photoshop, I did it this way. The peach fuzz on the hat and cowl was also painted in: I do that step sometimes, even if I do a full groom, really helps me to visualize what I want to get out of my hair pass with XGen (or grooming software of your choice).

Conclusion

The whole project took me about 15 hours to complete. I think this length is perfect to get a new study done, sharpen some skills and move on to the next one! My biggest takeaway from this project was the fact that I extract almost the same amount of value from doing a quick project like this as when I'm working on a long, complex project. I would definitely advise artists to do more of these! Just set yourself a time limit and try to stick to it. In a short amount of time, you can learn and reinforce knowledge on sculpting, posing, and presentation, to name a few. All very valuable skills! Each project should have a goal of improving a skill or using a new technique. This way, you progress much faster.

Nikita Lebedev, Character & Creature Artist

Interview conducted by Gloria Levine