Planning and referencing is incredibly important if you want to have a clear cohesive visual. I approach texturing the same as I do with sculpting. Photoshop is an environment I’m very comfortable in so it made it an easy sell for me. Their material library is far superior than most I’ve seen in other tools in my opinion and I really enjoy that it’s hosted inside of Photoshop. Texturingįor texturing, my usual tool of choice would have to be Quixel. One of the most impactful things that I have learnt personally in my career is that you don’t always need a complex technical answer to a visual problem, you can still achieve great results with the basics. This meant that as the light moved around the scene, it would pick up flecks of light and color on the eye with minimal effort. The planes are just alphas with an emissive applied, then I made a colored specular for the iris where I placed random flecks and spots. Often for me, the quickest dirtiest way to solve a problem is the best so the eyes are actually very simple! They are built up of two alpha planes sitting above the iris between the eye and the cornea. I can’t build shaders or mastermind sneaky tricks to solve complex visual tasks. Spending the time to manually retopo clothing is worth the time for stylised characters because it makes it much easier to control large primary shapes the lower the geo is. I will extract a mask from the body, quickly dynamesh that, roughly paint in folds (using references), retopo the new geometry as low as I can, refine the folds and claypolish. Sculpting tips I have for creating clothing are really very simple. Think of character design like a painting, everything you do should have balance and be there to assist your focal point, for characters, more often than not it will be the face. All of the strong lines in her design point to and frame her face to hold the viewer’s eye. It doesn’t sound like much but having a strict, simple rule set helps me to answer most questions I have during development.įor example, Sakura has a very strong hourglass shape – with her shoulder pads and skirt – so anything that distracted from that silhouette was removed or simplified. If you haven’t seen that piece I urge you to right now! Sculptingįor the sculpt – and for most designs in general – I set two simple stylistic rules for myself: to keep a strong readable silhouette and to use clean and clear shape language. I love Chang-Gon Shin’s Gwendolyn fan art, his work has been stuck in my head for years and he inspired me to make something similar for Sakura but with my own twist. I wanted something cute, youthful and appealing to anime and non-anime fans alike that strongly displayed its roots. In terms of style, I took inspiration from other 3D artists that had tackled a more modern anime look. This helped me to ground the design in reality even for a stylised piece. For example, I referenced how real-life latex vests were constructed for the top of the dress, umbrellas, wigs cosplayers had made for Sakura, shoes with paneling I liked and different brands of headphones. I don’t like to use only the concept and illustration as my sole guide, I will research real-life examples of the elements I need. Referencing is incredibly important and shouldn’t be a step you skip! I gathered references from the anime, manga, cosplays and promotional illustrations to stitch together in my mind how each element was constructed and built together. From there I started learning 3D modeling and found my love for the discipline. I got a job where they believed in my potential. I was contacted spontaneously by the art director for 22Cans asking me to come in for an interview as he liked my personal illustrations. At the time I was very active on LinkedIn art groups. It was a hard year of repeated rejections, and unfortunately like a lot of people I gave up on trying to make it into the industry. After graduating I worked in a bar for almost a year, applying to every game art generalist position I could. I knew the basics but that was about as far as it went. I didn’t have very good grades and I didn’t know a lot about 3D modeling or design. Most recently I was the principal Character artist for Variable State‘s new unannounced title (keep your eyes out for this one!) Way Into Game Industry Since then I have worked on The Trail, Heroes of the Storm and Spyro Reignited. It wasn’t until I graduated four and a half years ago that I started learning 3D art. I studied game art at De Montfort University for 3 years but I was a terrible student, falling behind the others in my class. My name is Shayleen Hulbert and I’m a character artist that has been working in the game industry for almost four years.
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