Seller Spotlight: CGPitbull

My name is Stephane Chasseloup. I’m from France and am now living in Asturias, Spain. My work has been featured in some digital art publications and magazines, and I have won some awards for my artistic and professional achievements. I have experience working in advertising, 2D Concepts & 3D modeling for video games, publishing, design, and as a freelance digital artist. Here are two covers I made for this magazine in 1998, a long time ago in a far galaxy. 🙂

It was probably about 20 years ago when I started learning 3D with Autodesk 3D Studio on MS DOS IOS; it was prehistoric 3D software compared to now! What brought me to 3D was a book I saw in the early 1990s about images created with software that only large companies could afford. Back then there were not a lot of tutorials on the Internet, so I bought some books for my own education and started doing some stuff. I made a cover for a Spanish magazine in 1992 – just a look at what the games looked like at this time to have an idea.

I’m passionate about all science fiction stuff – NASA missions, space exploration, UFOs, sci fi movies (I hope one day to see the novel “Rama” by Arthur C. Clarke represented on the big screen). I search for inspiration in all kinds of media: Artstation, YouTube, movies, my pencil drawings, and some comics that I made years ago. To me, taking a break means taking my camera, going around and taking some shots. Where I live, in Asturias (northwest coast of Spain), there are a lot of things to see and explore. 🙂

I do commissioned works for the video game industry, asset publishers, publishing and many more 🙂 I promote my works on different platforms, such as Artstation. Some of my models are now on Sketchfab, such as this recent one:

I also use my “outdated” website to promote some of my newest works.

For some years I have used Autodesk softwares, and now I’m starting to work with Blender for 3D. For years I used Photoshop and now I use Substance Painter, for me the best 3D Texturing tool, because it saves me a lot of hours of work, and I can create my own materials and reuse them on other models… For 2D static images and video promotions I started using Marmoset Toolbag for rendering; it’s another great tool, very easy to create settings for your renders, and you can add animations and lots of great stuff for game ready visualisation.

I started selling models on Turbosquid some years ago, when I started looking at how artists could earn income selling their models. I thought I could try it, and yes, it worked. Don’t hope to get rich selling 3D models, but some months you can get good income. If there is a young artist looking to earn income with their models I will say: never despair; persist, learn, try and if you do not like what you see, try again. Now a few years have passed and there are many other platforms to sell models and other digital content. With Sketchfab you get a “plus” as customers can inspect the models from all angles and check in full 3D how your model works before buying it.

The preferred settings/effects that I usually like to use when I set up my models in Sketchfab are: PBR, the “footprint court” environment (I like the result on metallic reflections), and I set up a neutral dark grey background. For post processing effects, I like to work with SSAO, some bloom, sharpness and I play with some tone mapping, adding contrast and saturation. I don’t always use the depth of field effect – abusing of this effect can make certain models, such as spaceships, look like toys.

How do I choose prices for my models? Well, it’s not so easy. I do some math about the time I spent, the income I could get… and as there is no marketplaces with the same royalties or rules you have to adapt your prices to each platform. I made some packs for customers, grouping models to give them options to acquire some amount of models at a cheaper price… this is not the most “fun” part of selling models. I’m an artist and I enjoy doing 2D stuffs and 3D models – I’m not a businessman.