Character and Creature Development – Behind DC’s Stargirls Character Creation

Crafting and bringing characters from 2D concept art to life-like 3D is one of the core tasks of the VFX industry. The job becomes even tougher when you are bringing to life fan favorites like Solomon Grundy and Thunderbolt. Zoic Studios Co-Founder/Executive Creative Director Andrew Orloff, who served as VFX Supervisor on the series, has been working very closely with creator Geoff Johns (Green Lantern, Shazam!) on the creative process that went into creating all the creature and character designs, including the Thunderbolt and Solomon Grundy.

Behind the Scenes of Crafting Solomon Grundy

Properly designing a character as steeped in comic book lore, like Solomon Grundy, requires a deep understanding of the character. Watch the behind the scenes below for Solomon Grundy to see each step of the process from Concept Art to final animation.

Interested in How Zoic Made Thunderbolt?

Here’s an except from a feature on Bleeding Cool from our Co-founder and ECD Andrew Orloff :

We start old-school, on paper with sketches. The basic proportions, silhouette, and then a key pose that kind of gives you the character of the creature at a glance. Then we go into a longer process of developing the character in CG to realize the promise of the concept art, like a turntable without animation, and get all the lighting & shading in the modeling together and see what it looks like. Then we’ll start building a rough approximation of the character to use in our pre-visualization process. 

Want to learn more?

Read More Here:

https://bleedingcool.com/tv/dcs-stargirl-creative-director-andrew-orloff-on-thunderbolt-secrets/