Joan the Knight
Created for Immémoriale short film
ZBrush, Maya, Substance Painter
Joan is the main character of my thesis film Immémoriale, and her design is greatly inspired by Joan of Arc. I adopted her iconic short brown hair and challenged myself to design armor that was accurate, functional, and could still be efficiently animated. Her body and hair are both sculpted in ZBrush, with the basic armor shapes begun in ZBrush and then finalized in Maya. I then used Advanced Skeleton to create the rig and added controls for a few pieces, such as the chest piece, hip pads, and shoulder pads, in order to be able to manually adjust them after animation. I also set driven keys for the knees, elbows, and fingers for the armor to follow the controls of those joints.
I hand-painted the textures in Substance Painter, creating a 'clean' version (for the flashback scenes/younger self), 'dirty' version (for battle and present day), and stone when she turns to stone at the end of the film.
Concept Sketch
2D Turnaround
