Painting the Forest Spirit - ZBrush Creature Design: Creating Dynamic Concept Imagery for Film and Games - page 617

See the DVD or download files for a video demonstrating this process on the image here as well as a
separate video tutorial on painting eyes on a close-up render of this Forest Spirit character.
1. Create a new layer with the Ctrl + Shift + N hot key. Name this “layer eyes.”
2. Select the brush hard round 9 #3. Set the diameter to be the size of the iris for the eye. Don't worry if
the iris overlaps the upper and lower lids, just get the right diameter. Set the brush hardness slider to about
70%.
3. Select a dark color like RGB 0.14 0.14 0.14 and create a circle for the iris with the brush ( Figure 9-93 ) .
Select the eraser and erase any parts that overlapped the eyelids (Figure 9-93).
4. Create a new layer with Ctrl + Shift + N and name this one “iris color.” Select a lighter amber color
like RGB 142 121 59. Use the same brush but dial back the hardness to 50%. Ctrl+Click on the iris layer
to select the pixels of the iris. The irises will be highlighted by the marching ants marquee. You can hide
this selection with Ctrl + H. This will constrain the brush strokes on this layer to just the area covered by
the iris.
5. Stroke along the bottom of the iris selection. This will concentrate the brightest values at the bottom of
the eye. Based on the angle of the light, this is where the light would be hitting the iris directly. The upper
iris is shaded by the brow ridge and eyelid ( Figure 9-94 ). Once this light is painted in, it should look like
a crescent of light in the eye.
Figure 9-93: Creating a black circle for the base of the iris
Figure 9-94: Concentrating lightest color at bottom of eye