About
Hello, Sketchfab community! My name is Stef Walker. I’m 24 years old and live in England. I’m currently a 3D Games Artist at Glowmade, working on our new title Rustheart. Before that, I graduated from the University of Hertfordshire in 2016. When it comes to making art, I prefer modeling characters, but I’m happy to do just about anything (I also like getting stuck into the rigging and all the technical hurdles that come with that).
Making 3D art is my job, but it’s also my hobby and I’m always looking for more projects to get stuck into in my spare time; when I find inspiration, I’m always eager to get sculpting!
Inspiration
In this case, my inspiration came from the art of Vince Marcellino. I’m always trying to discover new artists, and their work popped up on my Tumblr feed (Tumblr may be very quiet these days, but there’s still great inspiration to be found)! They’ve done a wide range of Halloween-themed Pokemon fan art, which was perfect as I’d wanted to make something to suit the season (and I also love Pokemon). So I reached out and asked permission to turn one of their designs into a 3D piece.
Modeling
The modeling begins in ZBrush, which is my go-to for all organic character work. To get the beginnings of the body, I created very basic shapes to block out all the limbs and head; making Ivysaur’s body was all I was thinking about at this stage.
I already knew I wanted to have the character in a similar pose to the concept, but to make sure everything looked correct anatomically, I worked symmetrically at the beginning and reposed the whole character further into the sculpting process.
With the pumpkin, I decided to make a whole high poly version without the face carved out and to instead work that in during the topology stage. I wasn’t sure how that method was going to go, but thankfully it worked out and saved me some time.
After the sculpt was complete, I took the high poly mesh into Maya to retopologise and UV it. (Since this was to be a static piece, the topology I did wasn’t the neatest or most suited for animation if it were to be rigged).
Texturing
For texturing, I used Substance Painter. There weren’t too many steps here as the colours are fairly basic. The whole model was hand-painted to match the concept, but I also added a little bit more detail to the pumpkin to make the material look a bit more convincing. I knew going into it that I wanted the pumpkin’s light to be emissive, but I also wanted the yellow eyes to have a similar glow, so I gave those areas a little more attention.
One step that is worth noting is brown edging to the leaves; I didn’t sculpt this detail in as I felt I would have more control if I were to do it via masks in Substance Painter. I’m happy I went in this direction, and I think it came out better than if I were to have sculpted it.
I also put a slight outline around the skeleton markings to make them pop out just that little bit more, which I think helped!
Outline
The outline effect around the whole model is a technique I use for a lot of toony sculpts. I like the way it makes it pop, so I’ve done a quick mini-tutorial on how to achieve that look in Maya.
Uploading to Sketchfab
When uploading my model to Sketchfab, I used the following set up:
The textures consist of a diffuse, roughness, and normal map, and I went for a reasonably bright lighting setup since I didn’t want the main body of Ivysaur to get lost against any dark backgrounds.
I used bloom to help exaggerate the emissive glow from the light in the pumpkin and Ivysaur’s yellow eyes, which helped to give it a slightly spookier feel.
After such a positive reception on Twitter over this model, I was super excited to upload to Sketchfab so people could get a closer look. I love how interactive it is, and it helps answer some questions I don’t always have time to answer!
https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/halloween-ivysaur-fd7b7c50743a43989ae66270d68d5e82
Thanks so much for reading and thank you to the Sketchfab team for the invite to write up this spotlight piece, it’s been fun!
Glowmade / Stef’s ArtStation / Stef’s Twitter
About the author
Stef Walker
3D artist at Glowmade
