Ard-Ri Arthur

"Arthur, once the mighty High King, was gravely wounded and taken to Avalon, where he was taught the ancient druidic arts by his old friend, Merlin. Now an elder, he no longer seeks power or the throne, choosing instead to wander the land in solitude, protecting it from mythical dangers and dark forces. Arthur's legend endures, not as a ruler, but as a silent guardian who watches over the world, ever ready to defend it when needed."

I never really did a personal character project, and I wanted to dive into that! It was a lot of fun to write the character, to infuse him with history and personal experiences, molding him the way I see him fit. After doing all the 2D exploration, I thought it would be fun to go one step further, and I fully built him in 3D, doing a few adjustments to make him work in 3D space.
Now I have a character I can reuse for upcoming personal work. I feel like I can finally tell more cohesive stories now since everything boils down to character and story for me. Having a character I've designed myself that I think fits the vision of my fictional world is awesome:)

Obviously inspired by the tales around King Arthur, I spent quite some time researching the origins of the legends, realizing it all started with a Celtic soldier in Ireland. That's also the reason why he is called Ard-Ri, which means High King.

A little bit of the technical background:
After gathering references, I purely stayed in 2D, sketching and writing to find the right shapes and stories I want to tell with the character. I continued working on possible props, explored the sword, and created a final 2D linework character.
Then I created and molded a character in CC4, imported him into VR and recreated all the 2D designs for him there. Texturing everything in Substance Painter afterwards, and assembling everything back in CC4, I now have a fully rigged character. It's not game ready or optimized, and the cloths are custom simulations for the pose instead of being dynamic, but it's a great base for whatever project I'll tackle next.