Character Asset Creation for Cinematics Vol. 1 by Amy Ash

A practical, no-fluff walkthrough for building a realistic fantasy character for cinematics. Amy Ash shares the exact pipeline she uses in professional studios, covering everything from interpreting a concept to delivering a final, animation-ready asset. This isn’t about theory—it’s about getting your hands dirty with ZBrush, Maya, and Marvelous Designer to produce work that holds up in a production environment.

🎯 What you’ll learn

• Interpret a character brief and build a comprehensive reference board.
• Create a clean, proportionally accurate blockout in ZBrush.
• Sculpt a realistic head with proper anatomical foundations.
• Design and simulate believable clothing using Marvelous Designer.
• Retopologize cloth and armor for clean, animation-ready topology.
• Model hard-surface armor and intricate props in Maya and ZBrush.
• Apply final surface detailing and refinements in ZBrush.

✅ Requirements

• Skills: Basic familiarity with ZBrush, Maya, and Marvelous Designer interfaces.
• Tools: A 3-button mouse with a scroll wheel; a drawing tablet is strongly recommended for sculpting.
• Hardware: A computer capable of running ZBrush, Maya, and Marvelous Designer simultaneously. 16GB of RAM or more is advised.

📝 Description

This workshop is built around the idea that a great character starts with a solid plan, not just a good eye. Amy walks you through her entire process, showing you how she breaks down a concept, builds a reference board, and creates a blockout in ZBrush to lock down proportions before any serious sculpting begins.

You’ll then move into Marvelous Designer to create realistic clothing. Amy doesn’t just show you the buttons to press—she explains how to think about fabric behavior, seam placement, and how to get the simulation to work for your specific design. After the cloth is sorted, it’s back to Maya for retopology. This is where the course shines: you’ll learn how to convert your simulation data into clean, quad-based meshes that deform properly for animation.

The hard-surface work covers modeling boots, leather parts, and armor using a mix of poly modeling in Maya and non-destructive techniques in ZBrush, like Live Boolean and Array Mesh. The final section focuses on detailing in ZBrush, where Amy shows you how to add believable wear, leather folds, and surface imperfections without going overboard. She also covers finalizing the head sculpt, using displacement maps for realistic skin detail while keeping the underlying forms solid.

🧑‍🎓 Who this course is for

• 3D artists who want to learn a professional, studio-tested character pipeline.
• Character modelers looking to improve their workflow across multiple software packages.
• Beginners with basic software knowledge who want a detailed, step-by-step guide.
• Intermediate artists who want to refine their approach to cloth simulation and retopology.

🧑‍🏫 About the Author

Amy Ash is an Expert Character Artist at CD PROJEKT RED with over 25 years of experience. She has led character teams at Axis Studios, working on projects like Riot’s Tales of Runeterra, the Love Death and Robots episode “The Tall Grass” for Netflix, and the launch trailer for Diablo Immortal. Her background spans advertising, television, and game cinematics, giving her a versatile, production-focused approach to character creation.

🏁 Final Result

• A complete, production-ready fantasy character model with realistic cloth, detailed armor, and a polished head sculpt.
• A solid understanding of how to move a character asset through a professional pipeline from concept to final detail.