Frollo

What makes a monster and what makes a man?

The Hunchback of Notre Dame has always been one of my favorite Disney films, so when I joined a mentorship with Raf Grassetti and Glauco Longhi in 2018, I knew what I wanted my project to be. It began as a bust, but as my skills evolved, the scope of the project expanded and here I am in 2022 finally putting him out into the world.

My aim for the project was to reimagine him with a more realistic costume for the time period (although a lot of creative license has still been used). I have always been obsessed with cathedrals, medieval time period and the aesthetics associated, so it was so much fun to dive into reference gathering and trying to find the perfect design to fit the ominous look I was going for. Choosing Peter Capaldi as the likeness was a no-brainer, and if they end up making a live action version of Hunchback, I think he would be a perfect casting. This was the first likeness I've attempted which presented a lot of huge challenges and although I've taken some liberties with certain features, it was a blast to try and achieve the right feeling to get his personality across. I had a ton of influences for this project including Assassin's Creed, classical paintings from Rembrandt and Van Dyck, classical sculptures from artists like Bernini and Carpeaux, and many games and movies.

I couldn't possibly quantify the amount of learning that has occurred on this project. When I began, I did not have the skills to fully express what I was imagining, but now I am happy to say that this is very close, and although not 'perfect', I am glad that I can count this piece as 'finished'. Leveraging what I've learned at PlayStation has been absolutely instrumental in bringing this piece to life, as well as other processes new to me, such as Texturingxyz, 3Dscanstore, xgen, marvelous designer, and using tiling textures in certain areas to achieve the needed fidelity, and making props. Although this character is rendered in realtime in Marmoset toolbag 4 and has clean topology for the organic assets, it is far from a game ready character in terms of polycount as I wanted to remove those limitations from myself since I work within them on a daily basis at PlayStation.

Working on a project that spans years is something worth mentioning. I worked intensely for several months on this project before coming to PlayStation in 2018, when I dropped all personal work for nearly a year in order to focus on my new job. When I picked the project up again, I decided to completely redo the body by creating the clothing in a posed position. My approach was to slowly chip away at it by working for a few hours here and there, and jumping around to different projects. It's been a massive learning experience in terms of the art and execution but also in terms of artistic endurance and the will to continue even when it may not always be fun and pushing through the times when the spark of inspiration is dormant. Character art is immensely time consuming but worth all the blood, sweat and tears, and I would have it no other way. Anything worth doing is going to be a challenge.

There are so many people who have been kind enough to give me feedback on this piece over the years that it would be impossible to list them all, and there is no doubt that this piece would not have been completed without them. You know who you are. Thank you.