Breakdown:
Doko Kashira
Doko Kashira is a character from a collaborative project, Userlander.
Doko Kashira is the name of a character I originally designed in May 2018. When I first made her, she was barely more than a colored sketch. I decided to revisit her again to revitalize her design and make it suitable for a production-ready 3D model.
She was designed to be the villainous leader of an underground gang of criminals, an egoist preoccupied with her own greatness.
(Her name is a reference to the Dokokashira Door Glitch, a glitch in the original Japanese versions of Pokèmon Red and Blue, commonly referred to as the first glitch ever found in a Pokèmon game and often used in speedruns.)
Initial Brainstorming Sketches
At first, I just wanted to add some more visual interest to her design and add some more elements to give Doko a little bit of personality. The original sketch was a good jumping-off point, but I felt it was too plain.
(Click to enlarge.)
Outfit Variations
I created a variety of outfit designs, keeping in mind a few elements I knew I wanted to be a part of Doko’s design: Black latex, shoulder pads, and ultramarine as an accent color. These gave her a villain-y look and made her silhouette stand out from the curtain of bright pink hair.
The final design and turnaround reference page. (Click to enlarge.)
Doko’s Gloves
A unique issue I had with Doko’s model was figuring out what to do with her gloves. They’re a transparent, shiny material that had some slight emissive qualities. Realistically, I knew that giving her an actual glove model would unnecessarily add to her polycount, but after trying the two methods out in Unreal Engine, I decided that doing just that was the only way to really get the effect I wanted. By having a second set of arms, I could also add just a slight distortion effect which really pushed the idea of these transparent latex gloves.
The bottom two images show the simple test materials used on the arms above. On the left is the arm, alone, textured to give the illusion of having a glove. The right is a separate glove texture applied to a different set of geometry.
Completed sculpt before retopo & texturing
Completed model rendered in Unreal Engine 4