LogInJeff Lianza has completed his realistic portrait of the legendary animator and provided some details on the working process behind it.
Last month, Digital Artist and Joint Head of Animation Jeff Lianza impressed the internet by unveiling a couple of incredibly realistic eye animations made for a 3D recreation of Glen Keane, a renowned Character Animator at Disney who worked on such movies as The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, and many others. Recently, the artist concluded the project by presenting the final version of the portrait and providing some behind-the-scenes details regarding it over on ArtStation.
According to Jeff, the project began back in February, a month after meeting Glen Keane in real life. The model started with a base mesh from TexturingXYZ, allowing the artist to focus on hand-sculpting the intricate details of Keane's face and refining his likeness with TexturingXYZ's multi-channel maps. During the look development phase, the artist also explored Sefki Ibrahim's character art course, which introduced him to new techniques and provided a more technical perspective. Besides TexturingXYZ's assets, the creator utilized Maya, ZBrush, Mari, XGen, Arnold, and DaVinci Resolve to achieve the final result.
"A significant part of the project was animating Glen's eye expressions," Jeff wrote in his blog post. "I hand-sculpted multiple eye shapes for the blink animation, meticulously animating each frame using reference material. Incorporating blendshapes alongside Wrinkle Maps brought more life to the eye movements. I used Faceform, formerly R3DSWrap, to fix the intersections on the eye shapes, it's way faster and more convenient rather than spending time cleaning up in ZBrush. Having a clean mesh with no surface clippings will result in a good Displacement Map when baked."
"Throughout the process, I faced numerous challenges in Maya, especially with the 2024 version. XGen hair would inexplicably disappear, no matter how cautious I was when amending files, and there were rendering issues as well. Some frames would change the hair thickness, particularly when rendering sequences across different computers. Despite these technical hurdles, the process was both rewarding and enjoyable. I hope I've done justice to Glen's portrait and that the effort reflects the inspiration I drew from meeting him."
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