Vägen Hem
Final University Project, (2025)
Vägen Hem is my final university project. The aim of the project was to create a production ready creature and character, while also finding a way to pay tribute to my Swedish and Finnish roots. The inspiration for the concept came from the Swedish folklore 'Leap the elk and little princess Cottongrass', a story of a princess who runs away from her castle. In addition, I incorporated my own personal touch to the story. Having lived abroad for the past ten years I often dreamt of a life back in Finland, only for the morning to bring me back to reality.
The aim of this project was to create a production ready creature and character, while practising my story telling and world building skills. Here is a small glimpse into some of my thoughts behind the character designs and process.
The design of the elk was based on the elks found in Finland and Sweden. I did a lot of research on the characteristics of these elks and incorporated these into the model, such as the white legs. As I wanted the elk to be old, I indicated this through the amount of points in his antlers, as more points appear the older they get.
Although these characters were not rigged, I still wanted to make them production ready by creating good topology.
The groom was created in Houdini using various maps for the different lengths and thicknesses. The textures were created in Mari on the base of the characters. I then transformed the hair curves into UV's and attached the base colour onto them.
Breakdown of the elk model. I sculpted it into a rest pose and then posed it in Zbrush
The design of the girl was inspired by Princess described in the Tuvstarr story. She has fair skin and long golden hair. Because my adaptation of the story is set at dawn, I wanted to add dreamy like elements to her design. I sculpted a flowy sheer nightgown, gave her slightly messy hair and no makeup, as well as added dirt to her feet as if she had been running through the damp forest ground.
Software's used: Zbrush, Maya, Mari, Houdini, Solaris, Arnold, Nuke
You can read more about the story behind this project on my Rookies page here