In Art Spotlight, we invite Sketchfab artists to talk about one of their designs.
Greetings!
I am known to you all under the name Zug Zug (That was my favorite orc saying from Warcraft). I am 27 years old, married and have children, so sometimes I am painting with one hand and changing diapers with the other ;)
A bit about me
From early childhood I was a big fan of computer games, as I am nowadays. I especially love MMORPG and RPG in fantasy style. And it is not hard to guess that I’m a big fan of Blizzard games, especially World of Warcraft. Warcraft actually inspired me to become a 3D Artist. In one moment I felt it’s not enough just to play games and I wanted to create my own worlds and crazy characters and etc. Initially my drawing skills were like children’s pictures at kindergarten… hehe. But I never gave up and was learning hard “day by day, kickin’ all the way, I’m not cavin’ in”… Reminds me of a south park episode about Warcraft ;)
Image from South Park
In less than six months I got my first freelance work and I was very happy! Nowadays I get tons of freelance work so it looks like sleep-work-sleep-work and I love it. It is funny but most times I didn’t search for freelance work, but the work found me. I post some WIP of my works at polycount and unity 3d forums, also when I have free time I do some assets for the Unity Asset store.
And now let’s talk about Fisherman Hut!
Actually it got here accidentally… It is a small environment piece from an RPG game called Tanzia, which I’ve worked on for the last 2 years as a freelancer and made almost all the environments, props, icons, and more. During this time I loved this project and have become friends with the developers. Tanzia will be available on Steam this Spring and it is a chance to see Fisherman Hut in “real life” hehe.
I made the Fisherman Hut about year ago for a beach-side area called “The Docks”. Sketchfab’s lighting looks really good, so about a month ago I decided to see how the Fisherman Hut looks at Sketchfab as a small diorama. Now my goal is to get the game lighting to look that good! ;)
My pipeline: Understanding what to do
I start by thinking about the environment and the climate around. Next I focus on the story of the location: who is living there and how, what features of culture and lifestyle they have. Then I will think about materials that would be used for creating buildings and props.
My pipeline: Concepts
When I have collected enough information, I starting rough silhouette/form concepts.
My pipeline: Modeling, UV mapping and Texturing
When I know all the assets and buildings I need to do I start Modeling + UV mapping, most of my works are low poly and optimized for mobile devices with tileable textures, overlapped UV maps and modular elements in models. For example I can reuse wooden plank texture for dozen of buildings and save some performance and game build size.
Most textures I do in hand painted style, using 3D Coat and Photoshop.
So my pipeline looks like Blender+3d Coat+Photoshop. For rendering I prefer Marmoset. If needed I also set up the scene in Unity 3D or Unreal Engine. Who can set up the scene better than the Environment Artist? ;)
About Sketchfab
At first I did not pay much attention to Sketchfab, but later I started to see lot of great works there and ability to zoom in and look around the model was awesome. There’s no easier way to share a model for concepting, getting feedback, asking for suggestions from other artists, etc. Now I can not imagine any 3D Artist without a Sketchfab account. Sketchfab became a big part of my pipeline, and I want to say big Thanks to Sketchfab for the great job.
Also I am available for freelance, just mail me zugzug.art@gmail.com
Thanks for your attention and may your wacom pens never dull !
Thanks Zug Zug!
Check out more of Zug Zug’s work here on Sketchfab and on his ArtStation.
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