The Witcher - Leshy Eskel
As a look development artist, I worked on the "Leshy Eskel" for Netflix's The Witcher S2.
Eskel is a character that gets transformed into a Leshy over the course of the second season. A Leshy in the world of the Witcher is essentially a tree-like creature.
To break up its silhouette, we added branches and incorporated sprouts on the torso to introduce green highlights over the moss. Due to budget constraints, we couldn't include moss as a CFX asset, so I suggested using high-frequency noise as displacement, which proved convincing since we didn't have any close-up shots. The most challenging part was assembling the various elements—branches, sprouts, and other details—ensuring they all came together seamlessly in Katana using a point cloud distribution, so the entire asset reached lighting in one cohesive piece.
One of the Leshy that Geralt fights during the season 2.
Turntable of the Leshy in a neutral studio lighting and a lighting HDR captured from the set.
The original filmed plate
The base model without displacement
Base mesh with Zbrush displacement + bump maps transformed into displacement + moss area noise transformed into displacement.
Adding the moss to the displacement made a huge difference in terms of realism.
Color texture maps and face integration. Ultimately, we decided not to use the CG face to preserve the actors' performances while also minimizing the animators' workload.
A more in depth breakdown by Rodeo FX.