King Rædwald's Shield (Realtime)

A faithful recreation of the shield found in the Sutton Hoo ship burial, long thought to belong to the 7th century king or Bretwalda, Rædwald of East Anglia. Part of one of the most important archaeological finds in the British Isles, the shield boasts a central boss, mounted with garnets and with die-pressed plaques of interlaced animal ornament. The shield front displayed two large emblems with garnet settings, one a composite metal predatory bird and the other a flying dragon. It also bore animal-ornamented sheet strips directly die-linked to examples from the early cemetery at Vendel near Old Uppsala in Sweden.

Over the coming months I'm going to be working on bringing the whole character back to life, complete with the sword, helmet and various accoutrements. This shield was created in Maya and Zbrush, using a combination of hand sculpting and custom alphas for the the pattern work. Retopology was undertaken in Maya, as was unwrapping. Baking and texturing was carried out using Substance Painter - renders in Marmoset 4.