Fishing on the pier, a hand-painted diorama

I went for a melancholic, lonely pier and a rough, grumpy character inspired by Davy Jones. The sketch defined shapes and colors; another one of the props served as my checklist while modeling.

I blocked out the shapes from the sketch, sculpted the face and arms with toy-like proportions and, after a quick retopology with Quad Remesher, modeled the clothes, boots, hat and belt.

I painted in Blender starting from the concept and refined it to make it more lively. I baked the sculpt’s details into a normal map for the face.

The props are simple; the detail is in the textures. I also modeled the pier planks and animated the sea with two Ocean modifiers.

I made a simple rig with Blender add-ons and dressed the pier with Grumpeld and all his fishing gear.

I rendered the diorama in Blender and added a simple animation to the character.