Building a photo real elephant

Its rare in commerical work to get to build an entire photorealistic creature from scratch, but thats what i was tasked with doing on virgin media trunk trucker. UNTOLD STUDIOS already has an incredibly history with this series, producting a walrus in a boat, a highland cow on a bike and a goat on a glider. The next in the series was an elephant in a truck. my primary role wa to buid the elephant, but i also had a hand in the truck as well. 

This was a female asian elephant, but you will also notice amale in the background briefly, whom i also modelled, the main diffrence is the scale and the tusks of course. 

This was modelling in maya and sculped in zbrush, and it almost broke me! the sculpt detail on the trunk has to be so fine for the close ups, i did it all line by line with very few alpha maps, it was just that detailed that i had to get completely stuck in. 

big credit to shariq Altaf who did the texture work. This is one asset im super proud of! a high bar to meet and be definately met it! 

Final Sculpt of the Female Elephant in zbrush - various views

Stills from the final commercial

Final Sculpt of the male asian Elephant, plus close ups of the trunk - you can really see how far we went with the detail here

Behind the Scenes

Untold produced this fantasic behind the scene breakdown of how the commerical was made, its well worth a watch