Before I could fully move into exporting the model into Blender for unwrapping and finishing the design, I sought verification that the design was cohesive and all the elements worked to each other’s favour. After receiving feedback about the helmet being too crowded, and should have more function and be more seamless with the hat, I adjusted the design so that the side plating of the helmet had a hinge that would allow the visor to be sat atop the helmet or in front of the main part of the helmet easily, as I thought about the efficiency of such a thing in battle. I also looked to several types of helmet models in order to gauge what would make sense and found that the design I ended up with made logical sense compared to my previous design which may have been too crowded. I wanted to add intricacies into the design, like various patterns, but I decided that would be more suited to do directly on the 3D model, so that the 2D art would be completely accurate to the 3D model (as there could be some details I could struggle to translate from 2D to 3D). After some final adjustments to the 2D design, I was advised that it would be better to figure out the logic and mechanics behind the structures in the 3D process.
With the advice given to me, I adjusted the render of my concept art.
Along with this, I adjusted the helmet within ZBrush and thought about how the helmet would latch onto the tricorn, so rather than a three layered design, I settled with a two layered one.
I then finalised the model by adding the bags on his leg.
USING BLENDER
I then imported the version of my model with the lowest subdivision levels into Blender. The polygon count was to my satisfaction, ending up at slightly over 200,000. Though this was still a lot, it was a vast improvement considering my skillset. I decided not to make the larger cape, the feather and the cloth around his waist on my model as of yet, along with the glass panels on the lantern, as I thought it would be easier to make in Blender using poly-modelling, as well as flat planes with no thickness being easier to manipulate on Blender. I began to make the planes on Blender, but realised that the cloth simulation in Zbrush could be utilised well for the cloth around his waist. I found that this got the desired effect for the way the cloth fell. I did the same for the cape, this time, manually creating the folds with several of the cloth brushes that Zbrush provided. I did this on Zbrush as Blender does not have not have brushes with such a specific utility, and I felt moving to Zbrush benefitted me more.