Old Medic : WIP

Old Medic — Character Design
Hi! This is one of the portfolio piece that got me Draft selection badge for my Rookies Awards 2025 Entry. It was created during my first semester of the MA in Games Art and Design.
With this project, I explored the character design pipeline within game development, drawing inspiration from the 1800s aesthetic—particularly the gritty, grounded vibe of Red Dead Redemption.

The concept behind this character is an old-timey medic. I designed this character from the bunch of references on my PureRef board. The initial focus was on designing and creating the clothing, but I’ve since expanded the scope to include props and equipment that tie into the doctor theme. The project is still a work in progress, and I’m currently in the process of learning how to create game-ready hair using hair cards, which I also plan to implement into this character in future iterations.

I was particularly Inspired by this "Plague Doctor" project from Buğra Erke,
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/2q8v8A
This served as the benchmark for the quality I aspired to achieve from this project.

The base mesh was sourced from Reallusion Character Creator and used as a placeholder for garment creation. One of the major learning milestones for this project was diving into Marvelous Designer—a software I picked up through various YouTube tutorials. I used real-world sewing patterns as reference to block out the clothing shapes. I got the realistic folds and Primary details from MD.

Afterward, I took the garments into ZBrush to sculpt secondary and tertiary details, such as seams, stitches, and fabric texture. The texturing was done in Substance 3D Painter, while the look development and rendering were handled in Blender and Marmoset Toolbag. I created two versions of the outfit: the first is slightly worn out, and the second is much more soiled and dirty. I revisited this project later to learn the game hair pipelines. I created a basic hairstyle using Blender's geometry Hair system. Then I used it as Alembic hair Groom inside Unreal engine 5. I tried both Xgen and and blender's hair system for tests. eventually I preferred Blender as I was more familiar with it.

While this piece was started a few months ago and the textures feel a bit dated now, I plan to revise and update them using the new skills I’ve acquired over the year. I’ll also be polishing the rest of the assets of this character. Although the scope of this project focused on creating the character's clothing, I plan to expand on it by adding more elements that reinforce the medic aesthetic. I continue to work on high-poly models for various equipment pieces that will be added to the character. In the future, I aim to develop this into a fully realized, playable game character.

Thanks for checking out the piece—and stay tuned for updates!