William Wallace - Braveheart

Fan Art – William Wallace (Braveheart)

The idea came from wanting to create a classic character wearing clothing with Lord of the Rings-style detail—but I'm not really a fan of that saga, and the only strong character that came to mind was the great William Wallace (also inspired a bit by Age of Empires, haha).

I started modeling him in ZBrush, but I didn’t like the initial result. Later, I restarted the project, this time using cartoon references, and eventually reached a design I really liked and began dressing him.

I created the clothing bases in Marvelous Designer, keeping the geometry relatively low-poly to maintain a stylized cartoon look—simple shapes but rich in textures and detail.

The most interesting challenge was the braids—they’re always tricky. I solved them by creating XGen guides using geometry and edge flow.
Another challenge was designing a blue-painted eyebrow. Instead of painting the entire eyebrow blue, I wanted the color to appear only on the tips, not from root to tip. I managed this by creating masks and adjusting root/tip values in XGen. Small detail, but something I can apply again in future characters.

I'm really happy with the final result: a stylized character with personality, toughness, and lots of texture and hair detail. I think he’d be a great character to see animated.