The zbrush sculpt for the Foot Companion is just about done. I've been putting a lot of effort into this to get the naked sculpt as anatomically correct as possible, as well as extracting armour and clothing that needed to be detailed enough to look realistic. I then poly painted everything and experimented with textures to bring the character to life.
Apart from the cloak the entire character was sculpted symmetrically to save time and make it easier to game res later on. Whilst I have been loosely following historical reference I tended to veer towards what looked best rather than making sure everything is historically accurate.
His armour is designed to look like hammered bronze and includes a Muscle Cuirass, which only the most wealthy of nobles would be able to afford, and the Boetian Helmet which was just coming into fashion at the time and was preferred over other helmets like the Phrygian because it offered more protection to the face and shoulders. The horse tail crown is thought to represent a senior cavalry troopers rank.
Since last time i've been improving the anatomy slightly based on feedback, especially around the face which people said looked a bit uncanny. I've also painted in skin tones, first starting with a red base coat and then painting in white and orange colour's to give the fleshy appearance of skin
The face and hair is only semi realistic but i'm not too bothered with vast amounts of detail since the final character will be game resolution. I'm not very happy with the hair because it leaves a harsh line on the forehead but I think this wont matter too much because it is mostly obscured by the helmet.
The next job for this character is to start retopologising which I have found laborious in the past using the standard tools in zbrush. I am considering looking at Topogun which I've heard is better. I will leave that for now however and focus on sculpting the horse which I expect to have done much quicker than the human. I do now have a job to help pay the bills so I wont have as much time to work on this as before, though this will hopefully motivate me to work more in the evenings and should sustain me until the project is completed.