You’ve seen the ad, you’ve seen the pictures, and you have the object in your content directory … but what about the artist who created this Alien Creature?  Well, wonder no more.  Leigh Bamforth, 3D artist and creator of “The Alien Emissary” answered a few questions for us about this creature creation:

What was the concept behind this creature?

Rob Powers worked with me personally on the concept of a wise alien emissary who wishes to pass over superior technology to us. He wanted something not too scary, yet not too stereotypical, either.  We also wanted to get the new IO Branding onto him, somewhere ,  so we went for an almost tribal geometric body paint. After several revisions, I finally went for a slender, almost regal anatomy, and tried to capture a sage-like quality to inspire curiosity.  
 
How did you approach modeling “The Alien Emissary?”

For Full organic modelling on a character of this type, I sketch out a form using Voxels (I favor the complete freedom of voxels at this stage over ZSpheres) in 3d coat, and then lay down some good topology.  I then bring the result into LightWave to build all of the internals and tweak the poly flow (Basically all of  the areas that you simply cant fix in a scultping package).  From here we take the mesh into ZBrush where I apply the fine detail then build all of the Displacements and Textures. By that point,  it’s pretty much ready to be rendered.

Why do you use LightWave? 

The main thing that attracted me to the software is the speed at which projects can be accomplished.

What does your workflow usually consist of?

•	2d & 3d concepts
•	Retopology and edgeflow
•	Pre Rig and Test, make  corrections
•	Detail Rigging
•	Detailling in ZBrush 
•	Animating

How did you break into this industry?

I posted work on the IFX Forums (http://www.imaginefx.com/ ) and set up a simple website.  I won a few  of the monthly competitions on the IFX forum and decided to put my work up to Ballsitic (http://www.ballisticpublishing.com  )for their  Exotique 3 publication.  I got a piece featured in the book and more opportunities came my way because of it. 

You can see more of Leigh Bamforth’s work at:  http://scary-monsters.org/Portfolio_Gallery 
