Torbjorn is one of the 12 characters from Overwatch, a new game that Blizzard is launching probably between the end of this year and 2016(we are all still waiting the Beta, isn't?) :D

Given I'm a Blizzard dependant I decided to spend some time building this character entirely in Zbrush. When the model was finished I've also started to work on a articulated version of it to make a toy completely support free and adapted to be printed in one-go.

My sculpting workflow

For this model I started again from a dynamesh sphere, allowing an easy way to fix proportion and basic shapes of the dwarf. 

When I had the base mesh ready, I splitted the project in different subtools using insert sphere, cube or cylinders depending from the actual needs.

Dynamesh and Zremesh had an absolutely primary role to speed up all the sculting process, as well as the main brushes that I like to use: Move, Dam standard, Trim dynamic, HPolish, Clay, Clay tubes, Form soft, Curve tube, etc.

For almost all the project I had to manage a huge number of polygroups used in combination with select lasso or select rectangle to hide particular surfaces that were tough to modify.

Adapt the final high-poly sculpt to create an articulated toy free support and printed-in-place

In order to do this I studied a robot model and I tryed to recreate in Zbrush a similar joint structure, having care to dont loose too much details or main components.

This phase in fact consist on a sequence of boolean operations using cubes and cylinders as main primitives to make holes, empty cavities and gaps: dynamesh, Close holes, delete hiden is the pipeline here :D

The joints are linked using a "bones system" that I replicated three times on the legs, making an "L shape" only for the pelvis area, like a Tetris concept.

The model has basically 8 parts splitted in two STL files:

- the BACKPACKis the only separeted part: I chose to do this mostly to keep similar shapes/proportions of the concept. The only way to have a Free support with the backpack included was to stretch the backpack to make it fit with the first layer. But I didnt like that, so I went to the other solution.

- the BODY: 7 parts printed-in-place. Two main kinds of joint types (one for the legs and the other one for the arms). Would be nice to test the helmet joints on a bigger scale (9cmx10cmx9cm didnt help a lot to show even the gaps).

Torbjorn took me some time to optimize all the parts, make a Free support piece with joints that give to the piece a quite good functionality, movements and poses. Feel free to play around with it if you'll like it :D

Torbjorn concept description and story of him

Torbjorn, a dwarven engineer, dropped armor buffs while he assembled powerful defensive turrets and shield generators. In his final moments on screen he turned bright orange, and seemed to be filled with the power of molten metal.

At its height, Overwatch possessed one of the most advanced armaments on the planet, which could be traced to the workshop of an ingenious engineer named Torbjörn Lindholm.

Before the Omnic Crisis, Torbjörn had gained notoriety for designing weapons systems used by countries around the world. However, his belief that technology must serve a better vision for humanity put him at odds with his employers, who desired to control his weapons using networked computer intelligence.

Torbjörn had a deep mistrust of sentient robotic intelligence, and while many of his peers wrote this off as paranoia, his worst fears were realized when the robot populations of the world turned against their human creators during the Omnic Crisis. Because of his engineering genius, he was recruited to join the original Overwatch strike team, and his many inventions proved integral to ending the crisis. In the years that followed, Overwatch became an international peacekeeping force, and Torbjörn remained a critical resource for all of its technological needs and signature weapons systems.

But in the aftermath of Overwatch's fall, many of Torbjörn's weapons were stolen or stashed away around the world. Feeling responsible for his creations, Torbjörn is determined to stop them from falling into the wrong hands and wreaking havoc on the innocent.