Gruuber

A personal project of mine. I did a quick sketch of this fish a LONG time ago, his name initially was going to be "croak". Gruuber is a somewhat mean, slightly foulmouthed fish who thinks the world revolves around him. Well at least the immediate vicinity of his fish bowl. I went for a shot that depicted Gruuber feeling slightly challenged by possibly threatened by the sight of something, possibly another fish.

I began the sculpting in Zbrush, then did the retopo in Topogun. Xnormal for map bakes and Photoshop and Zbrush for texturing.

Likes:
The overall render.

Areas of improvement:
A better system of scattering the rocks. (Manual shift drag in 3ds max)
Spent more time cleaning the scales. (They were a pain in the rear end)
More facial expressions


Regrets:
Not having the fish be all one mesh by merging the fins in zbrush. It's a nightmare to skin as it is now.