Character Trailer
To present Valeth beyond static renders, I created a short cinematic character trailer.
The trailer focuses on her role as a sacramental executioner and uses lighting,
camera work, animation and music to communicate a sense of ritual, guilt and spiritual duty.
Instead of presenting her through action, I wanted the trailer to feel slow,
controlled and ceremonial, showing Valeth as a character shaped by faith, violence and obligation.
The Face
Valeth’s face design reflects her role as a sacramental executioner,
combining ritualistic face paint with tattoo-like markings to emphasize
her spiritual and ceremonial background.
Additional scratch marks were added to suggest a moment of resistance,
as if one of her victims fought back in their final moments.
Presentation Title Render inspired by Senua from Hellblade II
The Hair
Due to the tight production schedule, I avoided using loose hair
that would have required additional simulation work.
Instead, I chose a tightly braided hairstyle that felt controlled,
practical, and fitting for Valeth’s ritualistic character design.
All hair elements were created in Blender using the
Hair System and Hair Curves.
Clothes and Accessories
Valeth’s clothing is built around heavy leather,
supported by a secondary layer of linen fabric to create contrast
in material and silhouette.
The armor piece and arm guards add a more protective and
executioner-like feeling to the design,
while still keeping the outfit grounded and practical.
At the neckline, subtle remnants of her former royal life remain visible
through a thick garment piece decorated with golden ornaments,
hinting at the status she once held before becoming
the Sacramental Executioner.
The Sickle
The sickle serves as a visual symbol of Valeth’s profession
and her connection to death. Its design was inspired by
the Wolf’s sickle from Puss in Boots: The Last Wish.
The folding mechanism in particular left a strong impression on me,
so I incorporated a similar idea into Valeth’s weapon to make it feel
more distinctive, practical, and memorable.
Sickle Inscription
After recently playing through Elden Ring,
I came across FromSoftware’s archaic style of English,
which matched the tone and atmosphere of my project very well.
Because of that, I inscribed the blade with the phrase:
“Have it writ upon thy flesh, that death hath found thee due.”
Modeling Progress
At this stage Valeths full outfit,
accessories and weapon were already blocked out in 3D.
The main focus here was to check the overall silhouette,
the different clothing layers and how the shapes work together
before moving on to final details, texturing and rigging.
Rigging
For the rigging stage I created a full body rig for Valeth
and adjusted it to fit the proportions and clothing layers of the character.
The rig was used to prepare the character for posing and animation,
while also making sure that the arms, legs and facial area
could be controlled properly for the final presentation shots.
Face Controls
For the face I added additional controls to the main rig
and combined them with shape keys to animate Valeths expressions
and mouth shapes more precisely.
This setup was mainly used for the lipsync shots,
where the eyes, brows and mouth had to be controlled
in a more detailed way for the final animation.
UVs
For the UVs I separated the character into clean sections
and placed the seams in areas where they would be less visible.
This made it easier to texture the different materials,
such as skin, leather, fabric and metal,
while keeping the visible parts of the character as clean as possible.
Cloth Simulation
For the cloth simulation I used weight painting to define
which parts of the clothing should move and
which areas should stay pinned.
This helped to keep the cloth attached to the body in important areas,
while still allowing the loose parts to react more naturally
during posing and animation.
Mocap Retargeting
I also tested mocap retargeting as a possible animation workflow for Valeth.
However, the retargeted motion did not work cleanly with the
character proportions, clothing layers and rig setup.
Because of that I decided to animate the final shots by hand instead,
which gave me more control over the pose,
timing and overall character performance.
Character Explosion...
