Creating Towering Sculptures for Spain’s Las Fallas Festival Character artist Moisés Ojeda on how he uses ZBrush to create an array of characters for the annual event.
Moisés Ojeda works as a character modeler in the animation industry, creating characters for feature films. But he also has a wildly creative side gig collaborating with the Las Fallas Festival, a weeks-long annual celebration in Valencia, Spain.
As a 3D sculptor for the festival, Ojeda uses ZBrush to create satirical character models that are 3D printed into sculptures (“fallas”) that can be as tall as 40 to 50 feet. Installed in neighborhoods across the city, the sculptures are burned on the last day of the festival as part of the community celebration.
We talked with Ojeda about how creates the towering character sculptures for the festival and here’s what he had to say.
How did you get started as a 3D artist?
Ojeda: I started studying 3D a bit more than 10 years ago. Before that, I was more into 2D illustration and traditional animation, but I struggled to make a living doing that. I was reluctant to get into 3D because it seemed to be a very technical world, but I started studying 3D in an animation school in Valencia and discovered ZBrush.
I fell in love with the software and was so excited to find that working in 3D was not as complex as I’d thought from a technical point of view. ZBrush is perfect for people with more artistic backgrounds, and I eventually became a 3D character artist, working in the animation industry as a character modeler.
Tell us about the Las Fallas Festival and how you got involved.
Ojeda: The festival comes from an old carpenter’s tradition celebrating the arrival of spring. Wooden structures were used to hold up lights during the winter and once spring came, the structures were burned. Over time, worn-out belongings and rags were added to the fires, giving the wooden structure a more human-looking appearance, which evolved into the sculptures you see in the modern festival.
I started getting commissions for festival sculptures several years ago. They were small collaborations at first, usually for lower categories and towns outside Valencia city. Over time, the workshops involved in the festival heard about my work and I started getting commissions for bigger sculptures. Now I work on the highest categories, meaning sculptures with many more characters and more complex compositions.
How does the creation process work?
Ojeda: Each neighborhood association in Valencia commissions a workshop to do two sculptures, one for adults and one for children. The adult monument is the big one, usually satirical, tackling current social and political affairs.
A 2D artist is commissioned to create an illustration, and that's the drawing I'm given to create my sculpture. The entire process involves a whole team, and my role is to translate the concept drawing into a 3D sculpture.
I model the characters in a symmetrical pose close to what the final pose will look like. Once the character is mostly finished, I use ZBrush’s Transpose Master to finalize the pose. Once I’m happy with the movements and expressions, I fix and remodel the areas that get broken during the process. Next, I use DynaMesh to weld the various parts into a single piece and then Decimation Master to prepare the model for 3D printing.
How do you balance the creativity and technical demands in your projects?
Ojeda: For me, the artistic aspects of a sculpture are the most important thing. If you are happy with the sculpt from an artistic point of view, it doesn't matter very much which technical approaches, tools, or processes you followed. Of course, there are some technical aspects that are very important as well.
For example, I use ZRemesher and reproject the sculpted details on a constant basis. That allows me to keep the mesh tidy and the sculpt looking clean all the way to the end of the project.
How does your professional work relate to the festival projects?
Ojeda: Being a character modeler in the animation industry has helped me a lot when it comes to doing sculptures for this festival. Animators are used to modeling characters in symmetry, which is very useful when it comes to doing sculptures for this festival. Over time I have built a library of characters, still in the symmetry phase, that I can reuse or adapt instead of working on new characters from scratch.
In the animation industry, you spend most of your time dealing with technical issues. You may finish just a few characters per year, whereas in this festival you may end up sculpting a lot of characters in a short amount of time. Needing to create so many models in a variety of styles quickly has been an invaluable experience that has helped me improve as a character modeler in animation as well.
Logan Baker is a writer based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.