Meet the Masters: Gareth West

About Me

My name is Gareth West and I’m an artist, designer and occasional coder from London, England. I’m currently working as a freelance artist, designer and web developer.

My background is in game development, which is an industry where I spent many years working for a fairly prominent (but now defunct) UK games publisher. I’ve also worked for a number of different indie developers.

It was while working in the games industry, primarily as a designer and pixel artist, where I first got into 3D modelling, as I found it to be a fascinating way of producing art and the more technical approach seemed to be a good fit.

I’m completely self-taught and, having originally learned to model in Maya, my modelling software of choice is now Blender which I’ve been using for the past 2-3 years.

My Work

When choosing personal projects my main priority is that it’s going to be fun, or something that will provide me with an opportunity to learn a new technique.

Although I try to avoid repeating myself and getting stuck doing the same types of models over and over again, I do find that I gravitate towards projects involving hard-surface modelling (like gadgets, or clunky vehicles and machines), low poly modelling, as well as subdivision surface modelling. I also enjoy voxel art, sculpting goofy characters and hand-painting my models, the latter being a skill that I’m always trying to improve.

I also love making fan art inspired by some of my favourite movies and games.

You can probably tell that I’m a massive fan of Hayao Miyazaki!

I also find stylised art much more appealing than photorealism.

Why I Chose Sketchfab

I first signed up for a Sketchfab account when they ran a contest to design a charging dock for a smart watch called the ReVault. I entered four designs and one of them ended up winning!

Unfortunately the smart watch never materialised so I didn’t get to see my charging dock turned into a real product. But it was during the contest period and going through the process of uploading my models and setting them up in the real-time 3D editor, that I realised it was a fantastic way to show off my 3D work. So I’ve been posting new work on and off ever since—and on occasion I still love entering challenges and contests to learn new techniques while working under the pressure of a contest deadline!

The render quality of the 3D viewer is second to none, and being able to see changes immediately in the browser makes the process of setting up a model painless. And I think that it still maintains that wow factor when people realise they can navigate around a model in real-time.

I also like the ability to seamlessly upload a combination of free, downloadable and for-sale items all in one place. And as a modeller’s resource it’s also a place where there are few gotchas—what you see in the viewport is what you’re going to get when you download or purchase a model.

It’s also a great place to upload paid work where clients can see in real-time the progress of a model and provide feedback during each iteration.

Thanks for taking the time to read my Meet the Masters article. If you have any questions or would like to hire me for a project, please don’t hesitate to contact me. You can contact me via my website, ArtStation page, and of course right here on Sketchfab! You can also find some of my models for sale on my Sketchfab Store.

Want to learn more about the talented and diverse group of Sketchfab Masters? Click here.