Festus

Festus, the happy dragon
This is a project I have started during the summer, that I've been eager to finish! Basically this is some fanart of Antonio Caparo's great illustration, which was drawn for Rick Riordan's Heroes of Olympus.
I've loved reading the books growing up and I'm proud to have been able to translate this amazing design to 3D as best as I could.
It was really interesting to have to think about how some parts wouldn't work and how they could work, and question myself on stuff like: how would a mechanical dragon actually breathe fire? Through a flamethrower nozzle, of course!
A huge challenge was actually modelling the greek letters. I looked around to see what ancient greek letters could end up sounding like Festus, it was good fun!
I was inspired by Clément Feuillet's insane letter modelling and boolean work, I thank him for the tips he gave me!
I also got to dig a bit deeper into substance painter which I enjoyed a lot