A weekee-greeting to all Hivers!! Well, I'm sure most of you have seen this character somewhere at least once in your life. On my last days of vacations I developed an obsession with Gorillaz' work. I already had a few songs from them in my playlist but that was the time when I fully got into research just to know more about them and their backstory, including the lore from the characters that represent each of them which is in my opinion hella creative and sick!
I could write a post about the band and the musicians themselves but it would be boring, Wikipedia does that for you. So I'm going to quickly tell you the lore behind this fictional character, the one that is and represents the singer of the band (Damon Albarn), globally known as 2-D, all this while I show you the pictures of my making process of 2-D phase #1, my favorite version of him :3
But BEFORE you keep reading please turn on your volume and listen to this Gorillaz song so you can enjoy the experience even more :D (bad jokes are waiting down there)
The actual fictional character's name is Stuart Harold, and actually yes, he used to have eyes. That was before a moron purposely crashed his car against the shop Stuart worked on and accidentally ran him over. Stuart lost his first eye and entered a vegetative state. A total disgrace.
official music video I got the frames from
That idiot was actually Murdoc Niccals, a guy who was looking forward to make a band. He got to jail for what he did, and also he was charged to take responsibility of the poor Stuart everyday, and one day when he took him in his car he crashed again when trying to make a 360 deegree spin to impress girls. Stuart flew through the windscreen. The harsh contact with the pavement made him come back to consciousness, but he lost his other eye. Another total disgrace.
Murdoc saw him stand up like a rising black-eyed god and heard him speak, probably asking what had happened or where he was, but Murdoc was not caring of his words, just listening and thinking he was the perfect candidate to sing in his band. He nicknamed Stuart "2-D" because of the two disgraces he caused to him, and Stuart liked it. That's how it all begun.
As you see so far, I have modelled the whole body. I used the Rigify blender tool with the advanced human template to make the rigging fast and effectively.
Very proud of how the hands articulate.
👍
I left the hair modelling process for later, since it doesn't affect anything. I made the clothes and set the colors, then started posing him for tests.
Time to un-bald him, it was getting weirder and weirder to see him still bald; I used some 3D curves for the hair strands. I remember this part was very time and patience consuming, ended up remaking the hair twice.
After hours of suffering being simplified in only those three pictures of the last hair try, this is the result :D
I then started testing the face rig.
" :3 "
*screams in agony
That's because he's now suffered a third disgrace: he's now 3-D
I think I just modelled him to be able to tell the joke
...Anyways, his mouth looks like a bird's beak, literally a bird waiting for mom to bring some food. So I started modelling the teeth and tongue.
And yes, he's missing those two because of the accidents.
He's so handsome.
And now it's render time!
He's smirking like "Call me". Only my bestie could give me this pose idea XD
... I don't even know what this is, don't ask. I think my creativity got wasted when doing that because I literally had no idea of what to do or of what I was doing.
Even a whole set for that very random moment-
I tried to make him stand up on the planet with such perspective but it ended up being so weird XD
And this is all! hope you enjoyed the post as well as the song and hope you get obsessed with Gorillaz too :D Read you on the next one :3!
All images without a link reference are renders or screenshots of my progress in the Blender project. I did not use a translator
