Meet the Masters: Jasmin Habezai-Fekri (CurlsCurly)

Introduction

Hi everyone! My name is Jasmin Habezai-Fekri, I am a 3D environment artist from Germany. Most people know me as curlscurly/lowpolycurls on social media. I am currently in my last year of university studying Digital Games.

Since early 2017, before I started university later that same year, I finally began my research into Game Development and dived deeper into 3D by learning Blender. 3D was the art form that clicked with me straight away. Sketchfab and YouTube were and still are the biggest resource for me to expand my skill set, besides getting constant feedback in different Discord and Twitter art communities.

Since starting at university, I’ve been freelancing for several clients such as Monomi Park and Mozilla Firefox. I also recently finished my internship at Square Enix Montreal, where I worked on an unannounced project.

Expertise

I have a huge passion for hand-painted textures and fantasy worlds, which I mostly focus my 3D works on. I always had an interest in video games, which goes back to my childhood playing games such as Animal Crossing. Whenever I would spend hours exploring their worlds, I would ask myself how it is possible to create something so visually fascinating.

My expertise, therefore, is in stylized or handpainted 3D environments with very colorful visuals and food! In 2018, I started a little trend of doing studies of food in 3D and uploading them frequently to Sketchfab. I’m also a very enthusiastic Blender user since I started with 3D. You can always find me introducing the software to friends or fellow 3D artists.

How I Use Sketchfab

Sketchfab has several usages for me. On the one hand, I like to showcase my latest 3D artworks on the platform for portfolio purposes. Potential Clients are always very excited to have the opportunity to explore a 3D scene in real-time while inspecting the model and textures. On the other hand, it’s also a great learning resource due to the inspector. Looking at other models and being able to see the topology and different texture maps on models really helped me to understand 3D better. To this day, I use Sketchfab for reference gathering or as a source of inspiration. On top of that, the community is very supportive! It’s always such a joy to connect with other talented 3D artists and see what everyone is creating.

Masters Projects

As a Sketchfab Master, I am contributing to the Women on Sketchfab series with my fellow Sketchfab Masters Abby Crawford and Mieke Roth. With this series, we reach out to women who are part of the Sketchfab community and encourage them to share their career path, experiences and advice with the rest of the female 3D art and tech community. I am personally responsible for reaching out to 3D artists with a focus on game development. It is especially valuable for young female artists and students to have inspiring role models who fuel their motivation to pursue a career in games, despite the hurdles that they might have to overcome. I look up to many inspiring women in the industry, who have been essential on my journey to becoming a 3D artist. Seeing them being highlighted in industry-leading communities is very meaningful.

I have also judged or hosted several challenges in the past, such as the Food Challenge or the Summer/Winter Cottage Hand Painting challenges. It’s really fun to see the Sketchfab community coming together and creating so many amazing pieces during these challenges.

A little highlight during my time as a Master was creating a 3D cake for Sketchfab’s 7 year anniversary! Afterwards, I got surprised by the team by receiving the real-life version of the cake. :-) It was absolutely delicious!

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