Wow thank you everyone, what a great response!
The Ewok (brilliant!) was one of the UKGarrisons and the event was MCM Comic Con London at the Excel Docklands last weekend. Yes that is Jerome Blake, he was signing just round the corner. Super fun getting a picture with him and his guitar
Again thank you for the comments, I have been working on him for years now. As a lot of people have said it really is the face that makes Chewie... Chewie, and I spent a long time researching how the skin looked under the hair, how the skull looked under the skin, really working backwards.
I ZBrushed the skull and skin over a very simple likeness of myself on the computer. Being a computer game artist I can match up shapes a lot quicker than I could in clay... plus I could slightly adjust his features to work with my own proportions without loosing what makes Chewie... Chewie.
As for beauty shots, I dont currently have any im afriad. What ive got was taken in quite poor lighting at the event. Ive got a few things to tweak over the next few weeks but ill be trooping him again at NEC Birmingham on Nov 22nd. Lots more pics then!
Its quite embarrassing showing WIP images but I have a few showing how I got too the likeness. You really have to jump in and have faith youve got the basics right and it will all come good in the end lol
Progress pic one. How bad did it look! haha
It doesnt look like Chewie at all until shot 6, and even then I have tweaked it a lot since then. The main thing I took away from this was how unique each area of the face is. Hair punch a lot more in than you need then take half of it out. Then some more. So much of the face looks badly made almost, thin to the point of seeing the underskin through it. The chin, getting the hair to hug down and around before you curl, the curls! so important, the short hair hugging the cheek bones before fanning out in quite a drastic way, the tall dome on top of the head, punching in the eye brows almost sells the character by themselves.
Progress pic two, Getting there but still lots to change, I was adamant to the point of insanity that the silhouette had to be right. Chewie is thin, really thin, and lanky! Yes hes 7ft 8 or so but he needs to look proportionally that tall without any nearby reference to inform you of that. The most important area for this is the legs, I didnt want tree trunk massive thick legs. I wanted thin, with that obvious L shaped foot sticking out. Even in these pictures the feet still need to be painted amoungst other things. I spent ages tweaking the feet, making them as thin and small as possible. No padding what so ever on the suit... in fact I spent ages reducing it down and making it more figure hugging.
As Markus pointed out, its not just the face... the body flow, curls, it all needs to be right for the character to be correct. The fur was bought from NFT in the states, expensive but well worth it in my opinion. I spent a while looking at which direction it should all go whilst sewing the suit. Ive included lots of extras like a separate neck piece thats trimmed and curled (like the chin) to give the chin curls more of a blend into the body matting.
One last picture, again sorry for the lighting. Next troop ill take some outdoor pics.
Really glad you like it guys. Means a lot. Cant wait to troop again.
