Hakob Patrikyan: Character artist interview

My name is Hakob Patrikyan and I am from Armenia, Yerevan. My profession is an architect, but I have an extreme passion for CG, especially digital sculpting. I have 6+ years experience in CG industry, and during this period I have acquired skills in different software packages and techniques.

I’ve been into 3D since I was 15. At the time, I played lots of PC games and was obsessed with environment and character art. After playing Prototype, I became interested in how the characters were made — and was inspired to create my own. I downloaded a trial of Autodesk Mudbox and attempted to create a human head.

Of course, it was horrible. But I spent a lot more time working at my computer, trying to make my characters look more accurate and natural. I explored anatomy and looked for inspiration from other artists to improve.

I later moved onto modeling with 3ds Max and rendering with V-Ray. Initially, there was a steep learning curve, but once I understood how to use lighting and materials in V-Ray it became much easier to get great results.

For the past six years, I’ve been working in the CG industry as a 3D artist.

Into The Void

The first inspirations for me were the games that I was playing, when I was a teenager. Then, when I got deeper in CG, I found several artists (Rafael Grassetti, Igor Catto, Max Verehin, Oleg Vdovenko, and many more) that became my main inspirations for creating my art. Every day, I still find a lot of artwork that inspires me to create my own stuff.

I was inspired by Nikolay Tsys, an artist who creates lots of cool creatures. I also wanted to challenge myself to create something horrifying from my own imagination, because I hadn’t created a creature using this method before.

The concept itself came to me after listening to “Into The Void” by Black Sabbath. I feel that this song really fits with the nature of the creature.

Into The Void

I used Mudbox, 3ds Max, V-Ray and Photoshop. I decided to experiment with this creature and try a new technique: I added lights, set up the camera and rendered the creature with some materials in V-Ray. Then I added these with some cool effects in Photoshop to get the final result.

The main material for this project was VRayBlendMtl with VRayFastSSS2 in the base material. I also added to it two VRayMtl coat materials for the highlights and the reflections. I rendered some separated secondary reflections with different secondary lighting for the post-production in Photoshop.

I rendered the character several times with different lighting and angles, but the results were not what I expected. Eventually, I found the perfect angle to show the whole horrifying nature of the creature.

For the lighting, I was inspired by the style of an amazing artist Oleg Vdovenko (Chuvabak). There is one main light source, which is like a small flashlight placed close to the camera, to get that horror movie effect.

My day starts with my main work, then my freelance work, and even when I’m resting, I still work by creating my own stuff.  I’m really very happy that my hobby became my main job – that’s why I don’t notice how much time I work.

As I said, even when I’m resting I still create my own stuff. But when I’m really very tired, I hang out with my friends , listen to and play some music , and try to spend my time as other normal people do!

I have many ongoing projects. Right now, I'm sculpting a soldier bust to improve my anatomy skills. I’m not using any reference, skin stencils or textures for this one — I’m just challenging myself make something realistic entirely by hand.