About Kasbo
This was challenge I set for myself of creating a fully rigged, pipe-line ready character/creature from scratch. Taking heavy influence from one of my personal favorite's, Toothless the Dragon from Dreamwork's How To Train Your Dragon franchise. If you're curious about the name, I was obsessed with the Musician Kasbo at the time, and it seemed fitting.
Sculpt and Design Inspiration
This project was especially challenging as I usually tend to go on the more realistic side. Because of that I had to make sure the shapes were elegant and not lumpy, but also grounded in reality so the viewer could see this as real animal. As mentioned before, Toothless was a huge inspiration for me, so I did a deep dive on him and found out that instead of a lizard, the team at dream works based his design off of a salamander, to give him a more friendly appeal. I based my design off of the Painted Ensatina.
Topology and Texturing
The texturing process was surprisingly the hardest. After retopo and UVing, I found myself noodling colors and textures to try and come up with something organic. Eventually I decided to replicate the patterns on the painted enstatina, using the a combination of projecting in mari and mixing my mesh maps baked from substance painter
Rigging
For this creature I built a production ready rig. I built the rig with IK FK Switches for the arms and legs, and an FK setup for the wings, with Keyable Set Attributes for the folding and unfolding.