How To Create a Frankenstein Monster Bust With Amazing Bronze Shader

Introduction

Hey there, my name is Oliver Schümann. I am a Character Artist and Digital Sculptor with over ten years of experience.

I began doing 3D art as a hobby (my first 3D modeling tool was Bryce 3D), and I’ve loved the medium ever since my first renderings and polygon models, so I never stopped, and the fire is still blazing.

Following graduation, I attended a private game art school in Germany to pursue a career as a professional artist. Over the previous decade, I’ve worked on mobile, console, and VR games. I currently work as a freelancer for miniatures and collectibles. (Portfolio)

About The Frankenstein’s Monster Project

The Frankenstein bust started as a random scribble project. I was on a train, and that was the perfect spot to play with the ZBrush on iPad version. I enjoy the process of “just starting on something,” and because of the smaller canvas of my tablet, I could focus even more on the silhouette and fewer details. After a while, I saw Frankenstein’s monster in it and started following the inspiration. Because I read the original book written by Mary Shelley a few years ago, I remembered the tragic story of the monster and the question of what defines a human.

So, rather than depicting the same angry monster, I wanted to create a design with a delicate and more contemplative appeal.

Modeling

The monster has a few hard surface parts, and Blender has the perfect tools to handle this job. Blender gave me the perfect control of my forms, and it was really easy to build the shapes with modifier power like bevel and subdivision. I didn’t make a specific plan for the design; instead, I gathered a few simple references of old machines and coils to get inspired and just tweaked everything until I was happy.

Because of the lore, I needed the pins to hold the skull plate in place, and because of that, I thought about the fact that Frankenstein had to shave the skull or even remove the hair completely for the procedure. It reminds me of patients in the early 1800s, as the sanitariums were full of cruel “healing” methods. Sculpting the hair was a combination of multiple hair strands to have more control over the shape during the sculpt.

During the sculpting, I broke the symmetry of the bust early and tweaked every side of the model by hand to make it more lifelike and natural.

The eyes are my favorite part of the bust! At first, I just made two simple spheres, and during the sculpting process, I was missing soul and character. That was the point of searching for classical eyes in marble and bronze statues, which are more carved out to capture the light even better and create a more lifelike appeal. After I sculpted the eyes, my creature was literally alive!

To push the feel of a bust made of metal even further, I added sculpting strokes that follow the flow of the facial structures. My intention was to make it look raw instead of completely smooth and finished to underline that this new living being was manmade.

To save time, I used the Digital Clay Pack from “ZBrush Guides.” I love the natural feeling of the strokes, and that was a perfect fit for my project. Furthermore, I added a very subtle pose to make the bust look like it was thinking, maybe about existence itself…

Topology

After my high poly was done, I decimated my model to have a decent topology for my renderings. I used ZBrush’s Decimation Master for the reduction and RizomUV for my auto-unwrap. I love how simple RizomUV can handle high-poly meshes and multiple texture sets. The key was to just set the cuts to a lower number and let RizomUV do its magic.

Texturing

The texturing was a fun process. After my topology and UV were ready, I brought everything into Substance 3D Painter. The baking process was straightforward, and because the mesh had a lot of polygons, I used the “Use lowpoly as highpoly” feature and created my base textures.

I wanted a very natural-looking metallic surface, so I gathered references about other metal busts and imperfections.

The layering was a combination of different yellow and brown-toned layers and masks to create the depth of the structures. The most challenging part was finding the right values for the roughness and metallic texture. I had to find a good balance between rough and very shiny parts to make the bust interesting instead of over-detailed.

My normal workflow is to first work on the base color, then the roughness, the metallic, and the high details to have maximum control over every part of the surface.

Lighting

After I was happy with my material, I imported everything back into Blender for the rendering. I worked with a simple light scene with a strong key light on top of my sculpture. Additionally, I used three rim lights to bring more depth into my rendering. An additional light was placed very close to the face for an extra detail highlight, and I used a very subtle HDRI for a nice contrast. For a very clean render, I light-linked the rim lights to the bust.

Therefore, I could render the head without overshooting the intensity of the background.

Because the Shader editor of Blender is so simple, I had no problems working with my UDIMs, and I just tweaked the color balance directly within Blender for an even stronger contrast.

Normally, I render .exr files to have my masks directly in Photoshop. Then, I used a combination of color gradient and exposure tweaks to make my final composition. A noise texture for the background created a nice extra level of detail for the composition. It’s a straightforward setup, and I liked the “classical” photoshoot feeling of my rendering. It was like someone inside a museum took a photo of a real bust.

Summary

Overall, the whole project took me three working days. I was so fascinated by the sculpture that I had to finish it fast. My personal learning was the use of classical eyes for a digital sculpture. I will definitely make more sculptures with them. :D

The main challenge was to nail the expression of the monster. It’s easy to make something that looks dangerous, angry, and ugly with too many screws and stitches. But it takes effort to find the right balance of cruel details and beauty.

My advice for beginning artists is to take your time and trust the process!
You don’t have to be super-fast; instead, slow down, start working on a very low subdivision, observe your work from multiple angles, gather references, and, as I mentioned earlier, trust the process.

In the beginning, every sculpt looks weird and ugly, but it takes courage and passion to carry on and reveal the beauty inside your sculpture.

Oliver Schümann, 3D Character Artist / Digital Sculptor

Interview conducted by Gloria Levine