Women on Sketchfab: Natalie Crabtree

Hello, my name is Natalie Crabtree and I’m a 3D artist in the Seattle area. I love making hand-painted dioramas with interesting color combinations and texturing techniques.

Background

I grew up in a small town in Texas, surrounded by my mother’s oil paintings and drawings on the walls of our house. I remember staring with wonder at a photorealistic elephant that my mom had drawn in pencil, thinking of the time it must have taken her to draw every single delicate line. When I was young, art seemed like magic.

My path to 3D art was not straightforward. In college, I jumped around between fine art and engineering classes, eventually landing as a math major and subsequently a math teacher. When I look back, I sometimes contemplate what my life would be like if I had stuck to painting (my preferred medium) rather than choosing a more practical route. During that time, I struggled to find my identity as an artist. I labored under the myth that success as an artist is talent-based and not the product of personal effort. I also found myself comparing my work to more successful painters in my classes. For all my experimentation, I was curiously reluctant to fail, which really curtailed my growth. Math was easy; it was art that was hard.

I took a break from painting when I entered the teaching field and it turned out to be one of the best things that I ever did. Leading others helped bring clarity to my own voice. I learned how to organize my time into short and long term goals. My perspective shifted towards a more objective stance that allowed me to take a more active role in directing my life. Shortly after I became a teacher, I discovered the game art program at the Academy of Arts in San Francisco. I proceeded to take classes part-time while I was working, completing their online degree program to get my MFA in 3D modeling. Game art made a lot of sense to me. It allowed me to merge my logical, detailed-based tendencies with my artistic aspirations.

After I graduated, I left teaching and did some freelance work. In 2017 my daughter was born and for the past few years, I have been working on improving my modeling and texturing skills in my spare time (mostly during her naps).

My Art

My art focus has changed a lot over time. I was initially attracted to more realistic environments and textures and a lot of my work at art school was focused in that area. I soon realized that the games industry, particularly indie games, encompass a huge variety of styles and versatility can be a major asset.

Early stylized work

Discovering the game dev communities on Sketchfab and Twitter exposed me to a world of new ideas. I admired the low-poly style that I observed in games like Overland and Dead Static Drive, as well as the gorgeous hand-painted textures of the Sea of Solitude. I knew I wanted my 3D work to move in that direction so I began experimenting with stylized assets and minimal textures. My early stylized pieces are a mixture of hand-painted and photo-based textures along with shaders.

At this point I knew that I had to start working more from concept art if I was going to sharpen my modeling skills. I decided to look for isometric concepts that had an illustrative feel and discovered Tom Haugomat’s work. I was really attracted to the high contrast and decided to recreate one of his illustrations in 3D:

I learned a lot from putting this together. One of the challenges was aligning the proportions of the model with the concept art. Another was the texturing process itself. I made the decision to only use flat shaders and no UVs in this piece, which ensured ultra-crisp color transitions, but created a lot of extra polys. You can read more about my art process here on the Sketchfab Blog.

After that, I wanted a new challenge. I had skipped the texturing process in my previous piece and wanted to focus mainly on texturing for my next one. Having recently discovered Heikala’s work on Twitter, I decided to recreate one of her ink drawings, Wizard Cat. I was charmed by the simple directness of the cat and determined that the final model be as close to the concept as I could make it. Honestly, it was a painstaking process. I have always done all of my texturing in Photoshop, and I hate viewing final results in the Maya LT viewport (it doesn’t handle PNG images well), so I repeatedly uploaded texture test after texture test to Sketchfab, which often included new uploads of the model if I had to tweak any of the UV’s. I also realized partway through that my texture maps were a hot mess, and if anyone were to view them I would hide my face in shame. But I am proud of the final result:

From there, I was determined to create a new scene that processed beautiful, glorious texture maps. I had recently read an 80 LEVEL interview with Joanna Lin and been inspired by her clean diffuse maps. I decided to develop a diorama that I had modeled some time ago of an artist nook. I hand-painted all of the textures, used gradient maps for the smaller items and kept the work neat and clean.

Tidy maps! :D

After all that high-detail work, I wanted to have a little fun. I had heard a lot about Magicavoxel and wanted to try it for a while. I downloaded the program and decided to work from a concept from Krysztof Maziarz. I have to admit, painting textures in Magicavoxel was indeed a magical experience! It was as simple as selecting the color and clicking on the voxel. This project was super-fast and fun. It also gave me a chance to do a tiny bit of animation:

Challenges

One of the things that I think is the most challenging thing as an artist is figuring out how to inspire and direct your own growth. I think that there are two parts to this. The first one is identifying the skills that need improvement and selecting projects that will allow you to work out along those skill lines. I think of it as going to the gym. I know I’m weak in an important area, so I need to strengthen those “muscle groups.” I also think it is important not to put too much pressure on oneself to try and improve everything all at once. For each project, I try to add one extra skill and then work on mastering that skill to the best of my ability. Even if it’s not perfect, in the next project I move on and focus on something else. In approaching it this way I can ensure that I am always moving forward.

The second part is way more nebulous and something that I am convinced everyone struggles with, especially artists. That is combating negative thoughts and emotions that stop us from putting in the effort to improve. I don’t always have trouble with this, but sometimes I find a project coming to a grinding halt and I wonder where all of my motivation went. One of my favorite ways of overcoming this is to break my objectives into smaller and smaller parts until the goal is so small and attainable that I can’t help but succeed.

For me, this often happens when I encounter something that I don’t know how to do. Sometimes my small goal turns out to be something as simple as going to YouTube to search for a tutorial. Success at smaller goals gives me the confidence to move forward, which adds momentum to the project. Each time I come to a standstill, I create another very small goal (“just model this vase!”) to keep me going. That and a lot of black tea. :D

Sketchfab

Sketchfab is a fantastic presentation tool and my go-to for viewing my work in real-time. I love the lighting and shadeless options as well as all of the post-processing tools. But more than that, I get a ton of inspiration from checking out other artists’ works. It has been such a boon to me as an artist to be able to view a model I admire from all angles or to zoom in really close to a cool texture. The community is always positive and encouraging and I have gained so much from being a part of it. A huge thank you to Jasmin and the Sketchfab team for reaching out to me with the opportunity to share my perspective.

Thanks so much for reading! Find me on Twitter and ArtStation to see more of my work.