This is a character that I'm currently working on. Since I didn't post from the beginning, I'll update from the progression I'm currently at and briefly explain the main idea.
Unrelated to the current Feudal Japan on Artstation, I wanted to create a japanese character inspired from Samurais, Ninjas and Monks. At first, I drew some kind of rough concept to help guide me through the sculpting.
Rough Concept
Then in ZBrush, I made a 3D Sketch of what the character would be like and posed roughly in a pose that would ressemble what I have in mind for my end goal.
3D Sketch and Posing
From that 3D Sketch, I went ahead and started sculpting different section of the characters separated in different sub-tools to help me keep it organised. Some of them were the arm, mask and katana.
Arm and Sleeve Sculpting
Arm and Sleeve Sculpting
Mask and Head
Katana
At some point I had to start making the clothing and I had to lock a final pose in order to create the clothes in Marvelous Design. My next step was to quickly make a rough rig in Maya and posed the character until I found a pose that I liked.
Maya Poses Silhouettes
Having found a pose that I like, I could then create a decimated mesh to bring in Marvelous Designer and help me create the different clothing parts of the character.
I started with bringing the lower body part to create the pants patern.
Then I kept the most external part of the pants and used the upper body part to create the torso clothes. I try to use as little meshes as possible to run simulation as smoothly as I can.
It is still very much a work in progress but once inside ZBrush, I put the clothes from Marvelous on the character and tweaked them a bit. The clothing started to look a bit more believable.
Clothes from Marvelous inside ZBrush
This is all a work in progress but I'll try to update a bit more throughout the creation process. Thank you for reading.