Background
Hello! My name is Gabriel Fernandez. I’m from Brazil, and have worked as a freelancer for about 4 years. I specialize in characters, and now I’m focusing more in stylized hand painted characters. I participate in some cool projects like the animation Petty Lee and the board game Tang Garden.
Choosing the concept
For this work, I wanted to do a hand painted style, but something different, like a real painting. So, while I was looking for the concept, I was imagining how it would look good on Sketchfab, when you turn the model.
Georgi Georgiev’s art is amazing, and definitely the best choice I could make. I really like the way he depicts hair.
Modeling
I did almost everything in Zbrush, except bases and details, like the cup, which I made in 3DS Max. I wasn’t concerned about the topology on this work because the focus was to show what I can do artistically.
I didn’t spend too much time on details, but did focus some attention on the folds of the clothes, thinking of the Occlusion maps that I would generate after. After all the pieces were done, I started to pose using the transform tools. It’s a good and quick way to pose characters. Also, I always used a spotlight with some opacity, to match the concept with the model.
For the hair, I started with the fringe. I did one plane with thickness, then copied it and arranged the copies to stick closely to the concept.
UV
I made a separate UV for each part of the model. I wanted a good resolution on the texture, but for production, mainly on games, it’s not a good thing to do.
Painting the texture
I started in 3D coat, and the first thing I did was generate a occlusion map, as a guide.
I created a base color, to understand the light and shadows of the concept.
Then, I started the real painting. At this stage, it’s just like painting a 2D character, using the same principles, always using the concept as a reference to pick the colors. For this texture, I used just the standard brush, but you can also use or create some different ones, depending on the concept you’re working with.
I made the texture of each object separately in 3D coat, and then I went into Substance Painter to put everything together and see if there were any problems and to make any shadows that were needed.
For the smoke and the small shadows, I just made some planes, with an opacity.
Sketchfab
I really like Sketchfab as a showcase for my works. It’s definitely the best way to show this hand painted style.The settings are pretty simple. I set the model to shadeless. After that, I just imported the textures on the base color, in the Materials tab. For the smoke and small shadows, I had to import the opacity in a grayscale map.
About the author
Gabriel Fernandez
3D Artist
