Artist gives much-loved characters a macabre makeover.
(Image credit: Filip Hodas)
Filip Hodas is an artist with a twisted view on popular culture. He's previously attracted attention for his series of pop culture dystopias, in which pop culture icons were transformed into unsettling post-apocalyptic views, and his latest work is no less twisted.
This time around he's created a set of cartoon 3D fossils and turned them into virtual museum exhibits. Each render looks like it's been dug up after thousands or millions of years underground and put on display in a museum, accompanied by telltale props associated with each character. The result's a sobering yet fun memento mori, which reflects many of our tips on great character design. Each fossil is set against a colourful flat background to provide a little cartoon flavour.
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Goofy's fossil is dressed up in his trademark hat (Image credit: Filip Hodas)
Making up the set are much-loved cartoon icons such as Goofy, Popeye, Spongebob Squarepants and Tweety Pie, sitting on little plinths complete with a label providing the Latin name for each specimen, and looking suitably age-worn. We particularly love Hodas' rendition of Scrooge McDuck, wearing a top hat and surrounded by stacks of gold coins. We have to take issue with his representation of Minnie Mouse, though; surely a mouse fossil wouldn't have retained those recognisable ears?
Would Minnie's fossil have retained those ears? (Image credit: Filip Hodas)
Hodas created these amazing images in order to improve his sculpting skills and experiment with ZBrush (see our ZBrush review) and Substance Painter, and he notes that there's quite a visible difference between the first image (Canis Goofus) and the final (Anas Scroogius), thanks to his improving his workflow and the way his skills developed over the course of the project.
Sponge Bob is totally recognisable (Image credit: Filip Hodas)
You can see the full set of adorable, macabre exhibits over at Filip Hodas' Behance page. Feeling inspired? If you want to explore ZBrush further, we've put together a handy set of ZBrush tips to help you master the software.
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Jim McCauley is a writer, performer and cat-wrangler who started writing professionally way back in 1995 on PC Format magazine, and has been covering technology-related subjects ever since, whether it's hardware, software or videogames. A chance call in 2005 led to Jim taking charge of Computer Arts' website and developing an interest in the world of graphic design, and eventually led to a move over to the freshly-launched Creative Bloq in 2012. Jim now works as a freelance writer for sites including Creative Bloq, T3 and PetsRadar, specialising in design, technology, wellness and cats, while doing the occasional pantomime and street performance in Bath and designing posters for a local drama group on the side.
