This is a sculpt I did in a long series of sculpts that had to do with the ocean. I aimed for realism, but I am still an amateur. However, I am really proud of how far I have come with the organic form and details. After looking at dozens of pictures of large whales and turtles, I got a sense of how barnacles and scars accumulate over time on big marine animals, and used a particle system to add that to my work.
Anyways, I hope you like it. Please give me feedback on how to improve on detailing and rendering for underwater scenes, as I am kind of making up my own methods as I go.
Creating the creature was pretty straightforward. I did sculpting, retopo, and texture painting to give it a whale kind of look. I used weight painting and a hair particle system to give it barnacles of various sizes. To make it look like it was underwater, I looked at some pictures of orcas and whales from underwater and added a cube with volume scatter to try and copy the underwater fogginess. Light shafts and marine snow were added in photoshop, and I changed the colors to try and make it look like it was shot with an underwater camera.
