I have been working on this personal project for the past couple of months, on and off!
My goal was to produce an image, and character, that would show the Superman that I wanted to see.
A Superman that was truer to the original vision, that was classic and that was from the 1930's or 1940's era USA.
The colours are warm and saturated to help evoke the feeling of golden age America and its heroes. I wanted the final image to feel like an Edward Hopper or Jack Vetriano painting.
I also wanted Superman to be personable and be robust enough of character to exist in a world where he could do some of the goofy stuff like pluck a cat from a tree, or help an old lady cross the road, and also have a fatal encounter with Doomsday and kick General Zod's (Terence Stamp!) arse.
In the images below Superman and The Daily Planet were rendered in Marmoset Toolbag 2. The clouds have been added in Photoshop.
The models were created in Maya and ZBrush, with textures done via Polypaint and Photoshop.
Faster than a speeding bullet!
Foggy day in Metropolis.
The sketches below show the thought process that I went through to get to the character above.
I knew that I wanted Superman to be cartoony but I didn't know how cartoony or detailed I wanted to go. It took a while in ZBrush to arrive at the final model, and it did go through some scary iterations, but I am happy with where it has landed.
This is the face that appealed to me the most, with the hairstyle that goes up on the right!
During this sketch stage I was surprised at just how much the curl makes the character of Superman.
I made the decision early on that this Superman wouldn't be a muscle bound Mr Universe but would be more like the George Reeves vision of Superman who has mass but is not overly defined.
For a long time I had intended to recreate the cover of Action Comics No1. There are a couple of reasons why I didn't;
1. Looking at the cover with objective eyes it looks like Superman is actually causing all of the mayhem and could be the villain of the piece.
2. I had been working on this for a while, I had modelled a car (a 1939 Ford Deluxe Coupe) but if I was going to recreate the cover I was going to need more characters and an environment for it all to exist in, and I just didn't have the time.
The composition I decided on allowed the focus to be on the character and allowed me to create a simple model of The Daily Planet for the back drop.
Here's a render of the car that I modelled for the original composition, a 1939 Ford Deluxe Coupe.
This was modelled in Maya and texture in Substance Painter.
This is a render from Marmoset Toolbag 2.
Did I mention that I am looking for work?
If not, then I am!
Thanks,
Jason
