Character History and Reference

History

Little Krampus is a being standing no taller then four foot two. He is mischievous, dedicated, and cruel. He holds the annual ill forgotten job of punishing those during Christmas who do not exude Christmas cheer. From the start of December 6th (Krampusnacht or Krampus Night) to the end of Christmas night; Krampus stirs. While Santa gives presents with glee and cheer, Krampus delivers coal to those naughty. The coal is delivered as a warning, for if the chosen children do not sway from their current path they will see a much different side of the mischievous Krampus.

Rendering Style

I wish to draw inspiration from the rendering style of the Lord of the Rings franchise. In particular, I find Gollum a great subject to study. Gollum personifies the gritty but innocent look I wish to create for Little Krampus. Through the LOTR films Gollum both incites playful mischievousness but also instintual animal-like behavior. These are two traits I inherently wish to capture.

Other Details

Home - The North Pole

Favorite Food - raw fish

Age - unknown (70-80 y/o facial features)

Tangible Reference

UV Mapping and Displacement

The amount of objects and complexity of Krampus dictated that I go slow and precise with my UV mapping. I realized that if I was going to finish the project I would need great UVs to help speed up texturing. I tried to group similar objects together and think if I would need UDIM for key focal pieces as I was working.

Displacement was created in Zbrush and Mari. The overall displacement was exported out of Zbrush on lower subdiv models to help with rendertime and overall handling. In order to find the best displacement method I worked with vector displacements. I used zbrush diagnostic files for vector displacements to find the perfect flip switch values for exact one to one translation of detail. This method saved hours of time fiddling with settings and allowed me to continue to more important issues.

Secondary bump and displacement was created in Mari using texture maps to create pore detail, fabric texture, rock grain, and more.

Texture Creation

Many textures were used for the creation of Krampus but the most key elements came from the above images. These tilable textures were first scanned from my reference objects then edited in Photoshop. For all objects dealing with fabric or leather one or more of these textures were used.

The slow methodical nature of creating great UVs allowed me to speed of my texturing process with a lot of procedural options. I layered procedurals to create interesting but believable materials that did not have a tiled look to them.

The fabric for Krampus's coat was the most important and first aspect I tackled on the project after completing the face. I did not want his Santa suit to resemble the soft velvet material of commonality but instead wanted a rough, tactile, almost uncomfortable looking coat to be worn. The texture chosen for this was actually the underside of a soft velvet material.

Look Development - World Testing

To create a believable character for all environments I continuously changed the world environment during look development. I wanted this character to hold up to scrutiny in all environments and not fall into the common theme of looking good in only the perfect lighting.

This made me realize important aspects such as the specularity on the face was reflecting too much of the environment or the black of the horns often gets lost in the background. It also gave me insight into his presence in certain lighting scenarios. Some making him look cheerful and happy and others making him skulk in the shadows with his steel blue eyes gleaming through.

Important Characteristics

There are always major characteristics that make a character memorable and give insight into how that character lives and who they are. Krampus has a great variety of these things that really make him an interesting character to look at.

The major key aspects of Krampus are his knicknacks (bells, basket, fork/knife, coal), his eyes, and his overall fabric material. As a viewer I want to look at all the playful things he carries with him but also want to focus my eye on his deadly stare.

As humans we are constantly fascinated with focusing on the eyes of any person or thing we look at. The eyes are said to be the windows of the soul and most often give a good sense of character. This is no different for CG characters. The small nature of his pupils with the steel blue color give a very mysterious and possibly animal-like presense.

For the smaller aspects that sprinkle a little flair I really enjoy the dirty nature of his fingers as he carries his coal or the little present he has on his arm patch.

Future Plans

I wish to continue on this project to push not only the textures but also the lighting and environment. Because of time constraints I had to go for a minimal dirty look. My main future plan to revamp the textures to look realistically dirty and to tweak the lantern.

I also plan to render the hair from the curves previously exported out of Zbrush from fibermesh. The hair is very important to this character and I would hate to lose that feature.