A long long time ago my friend Josh Lopata and I wanted to do an art trade. He makes really cool models out of drift wood and so the plan was that he'd make me a gnarly skeleton hand and I would 3d print a character for him. I should have thought about it a little harder because he was able to make his side of the trade in a weekend and I eventually delivered my end about a year later... I absolutely love 3d, but I'll always be envious of how quickly a prop can be made with your hands rather than pixels.

The idea for the character I was going to make had evolved a bit since I'd procrastinated for so long. Josh had turned our garage into a diorama featuring a giant winged beast and he wanted a hero to be facing off with it. He drew up a concept and I mixed my own design with it. The whole thing was supposed to be a gift for Josh, so I thought it would be cool if the hero looked like him and had a couple of elements that he likes to use in his art.

Everything was modeled from scratch in ZBrush without symmetry. Then I keyed the figure to be 3d printed with a form2 and Josh did the figure painting.

Josh and his partner Amber built a huge scene for the Cobrador to face off against the beast. We spent a day filling it with smoke and Josh and Amber added final touches like the glow in the dark blood and saliva dripping from the teeth.

The guy really likes to make costumes. I took some of his aesthetic and wove them into the design of the character. I also incorporated the sun figures that Josh makes and some elements from his independent stop motion short film.

The design evolved from Josh's original drawings. I started in ZBrush by pulling out really basic shapes because I knew the general pose that I wanted. From there, we talked about what all of the add-on details would be and I made a list in the form of a rough draw over.

After the sculpt was finished, I had to break the character up into separate pieces so it could be printed. The size of what can be printed on the form2 is a factor when splitting up a model, but you also have to consider what pieces should be separate to make painting a little easier.

After I cleaned up the print, I sent it off to Josh for a little bit more clean up and then painting.