Breaking Into tHE iNDUSTRY AND cAROUSEL ENVIRONMENT BREAKDOWN

Join us in this 2 part article with Sabrina Echouafni that’s absolutely packed with useful info! In part 1 we discuss Sabrina’s journey into the games industry from school to internship to breaking into the industry followed by tons of tips for new artists, students and graduates. In part 2 we delve into Sabrina’s beautiful Carousel Environment and everything that went into creating it.

Intro

Hello everyone! My name is Sabrina and I am currently an Environment Artist working at Valkyrie Entertainment working on the next God of War. I grew up in Morocco, Africa and moved to the US for college! I joined Valkyrie when I was technically still a student, and was taking a couple online classes while working in Seattle to complete my degree. Growing up I drew a lot, and I thought I wanted to become an illustrator. Fun fact, when I was looking for colleges to attend after high school, I was completely set on going to Med school. I didn’t even consider that doing art full time was possible, as it was frowned upon in my country. I decided to humour it a bit and looked into art schools. During my research I found out that doing 3D was something that existed! At the time I was obsessed with 3D animations on Youtube so I looked into it deeper. Then I found out I could make games! What!? This is a real job I could pursue? That blew my mind and I never looked back since.

I honestly don’t remember the first game I played, I guess the first game I really got into as a pre-teen was Runescape. Played that for years, eventually I switched to console games and played a lot of shooters and realistic/grimy games. I found out in high school that I really had a knack for competitive shooters, and at one point drowned nearly 1000 hours of my life into CSGO. It was a dark time.

Part 1: Breaking Into The Industry

Internship At Insomniac Games

Being an intern at Insomniac Games on Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales definitely opened my eyes to what it’s like being in the games industry. In only 3 months, it felt like I improved more than I did going to school for 3 years. It’s insane how doing 3D for 8 hours every day can push your skill level so much. One thing that I learned from the most, which is very hard to replicate in colleges, is getting to work with different departments. And as an environment artist, working with designers impacted me the most. Towards the end of my internship, Jason Hickey, the lead of my project, entrusted me with the block-out of the Oscorp Science Center. I was working with my co-worker Ernesto Becerra (he was pretty much a mentor during this task) directly with one of the level Designers, going back and forth, and I honestly learned so much. It was arguably my hardest task during my time there. It’s crazy as an environment artist how much you don’t think about — until you work on a game (e.g. player traversability, metrics, proper collision, narrative, etc).

In terms of how I was selected, I applied to the careers section of their website. I heard back from them and had an interview. To students my advice is: the biggest and hardest part is getting the interview. Your art speaks for itself and if the company is good, that essentially should be the only thing between you and getting a job (unless you’re an asshole). I had a phone interview at first, and then a video call with two leads on the project. Afterwards I asked, and I was told what stood me apart from other applicants was my seemingly genuine, wholehearted passion and enthusiasm during the interview. Before that it was my work. According to one of the seniors, they had Ringling students for 3 years prior to me, and I broke that streak. Ultimately, if you’re looking at the right studio, things like what school you went to shouldn’t affect how employable you are, it’s your work. Also for students: one of the biggest critiques I got while interviewing was to clean up my portfolio, as my focus wasn’t clear. I have props, characters and environments on my portfolio, even though I was applying to environment artist jobs. Something to keep in mind.

What You Learnt During Your Internship?

So this doesn’t pertain to Insomniac, as it’s an absolutely fantastic studio. I had a great time during my internship and don’t have any complaints. However, it made me realize dream studios aren’t a thing. During my time at school I’d be like “oh my dream studio is this or that, and wow I wanna work with them so bad”. I made a lot of friends that summer, almost all of them being at AAA studios, and honestly… a lot of them were so miserable. It was very disheartening. They started the summer with bright passionate eyes, and by the time I left they looked completely dead inside. Just, please keep in mind that just because a studio makes an award winning game, doesn’t mean it’ll be paradise working for them. It can be a very harsh reality for a lot of people, don’t fall for that.

Another thing is a lot of big studios concerningly underpay their employees. Please do not undersell yourself. Do research and find out what junior artists in the position you’re applying for are generally making, know your worth. A lot of people can get blinded by a big name and take a job in LA paying 2k for rent and making 50k a year (OR LESS!!!!). Don’t try and justify it, it isn’t worth it. So many people get burnt out because of crunch and whatnot, and end up just completely quitting this industry. It’s terrible.

Primary Tasks At Insomniac

One thing I did not expect before my internship, was how much responsibility and trust Insomniac Games gave me as an intern. I was treated as a fulltime employee, and immediately felt like I was part of the team. This was definitely something I didn’t want to take for granted, and reflected the workplace culture heavily. I worked on all kinds of things, from props to texturing, set dressing, story pitching, level blockouts, helping with outsource, etc. I had my hands on so many parts of the game and parts of the pipeline, it sincerely felt like I was making a big difference, and making my mark on the game. It was so exciting! After finally getting my hands on the game, seeing my work just sitting there felt unreal.

They tried to make sure I experienced as many things as possible before I left, and it meant a lot to me. I think a good part of it was because my lead liked the work I was doing a lot, and was trying to challenge me with every new task. I had a blast with that because of my competitive nature, and I was always excited to prove myself. We got along really well because of our similar work ethics. I also got along well with my mentor, a Senior Environment Artist on the project Trey McNair. He did an excellent job at mentoring me during that time, and is definitely the reason my skills improved so quickly. He was always available to answer questions and was eager to help, as well as provided me with cool Maya tricks that have sped up my workflow incredibly! He’s also very hardworking and has achieved so much at such a young age, I respect and look up to him a lot. Check out his stuff! I still hit him up from time to time with questions.

Something That Students / New Artists Should Do When Applying To Studios

So I have applied to a lot of studios. I’m not claiming I’m a guru or a recruiter but I have learned a lot after 40+ rejections.

DISCLAIMER: I’ve never worked at an indie studio so I cannot give you a perspective on that if that’s the industry you’re pursuing! Anyway, here’s what I can tell you from the top of my head:

• People want to help: First I’m going to mention the obvious (or not), people want to help. I’ve contacted people before, and I was never deterred. If you have questions about applying, your portfolio, etc. Just treat people with respect, and don’t ask clear common sense stuff. (When in doubt, google). No one is trying to hog all the jobs, we want other people to succeed and we want to work with good people. There is nothing more satisfying than seeing that I helped someone succeed or inspired them to push themselves, and that goes for others too!

• Don’t take the job postings at face value: There’s a lot that can be said about this. First , just because a job is listed does not mean it hasn’t been filled. A lot of the time studios are super bad at updating that stuff. Do not bank on one position or studio. Second , don’t let all the boilerplate stuff discourage you from applying. You use Max and they want Maya? Apply. They want 5 years experience and you have 1? Apply. Literally every single job application I got an interview from was demanding more than I was offering. I’ve gotten interviews still in school, from postings claiming I needed 5 years experience, or 2 shipped AAA games. Not applying leaves you with the same result as getting rejected . Keep that in mind! Third, know that a lot of things are handled internally. This is why networking is VERY important. 80% of the jobs that are available don’t even reach the studio’s website. When you see a posting on their careers section, that means they’ve already exhausted all their options. Studios would much rather spend money on someone they know they can trust rather than a complete stranger. Mingle with devs, go to meet-ups, interact with people on Twitter, network network network ! Another piece of advice: do NOT go into it with the intention of getting a job out of it. Any dev can sniff that out of you a mile away, and will give them a poor first impression of you. Desperation can reek off a person, trust me.

• Rejections do not determine your worth: Sometimes your skill set / style isn't what they're looking for at the moment or doesn't fit their current project. Or maybe they found a candidate before they got to your application. There’s a lot of variables. On the other hand, if you keep constantly getting rejected with 0 interest whatsoever, it's never a bad move to push your portfolio and work further. Maybe you're not there yet, and that's okay too.

• One posting doesn’t always mean one job: This is pretty straightforward. Sometimes studios will post one job listing when they’re looking for two or three new hires. It just makes things easier.

• Don’t accept every offer: I realize that this doesn’t sound like great advice when your only goal is to break into the industry. They’re desperate times, I get it. But here’s the thing, if you’re ready, you will eventually/inevitably get offers. This comes back to knowing your worth. I got an offer from what was my dream studio at the time, and they were wanting me to move to Europe with no relocation assistance and only for a contract gig. As much as I wanted to work for them, I couldn’t afford it. And luckily I didn’t, now I am very happy working at Valkyrie Entertainment on something even closer to my heart! In junior year of college I also almost accepted an internship offer from one of the biggest VFX studios in animation but then I got an offer from Insomniac that really gave me perspective on what they were offering. The name distracted me from how poor the offer truly was. Different strokes for different folks. Know what’s important to you, don’t undersell yourself.

• Put in the work, you’re not special: When it comes down to it, if your work isn’t good enough, you won’t get hired. No amount of networking and butt kissing will make you a competent artist. Don’t cheat yourself, don’t try to cheat the system or somehow jump ahead of others. Don’t be dishonest about what you can do, etc. Even if you make it in that way, these types of people get weeded out eventually.

• Do what you love: If you're passionate enough about what you do and keep pushing at it, you’ll inevitably get better. Passion shines, and when someone truly loves what they do that comes across very clearly. It makes you desirable as an employee, and people are more drawn to you as well. They will want to work with someone like that. I highly discourage making portfolio pieces that you are choosing simply to get a job, maybe call it “woo woo” but I feel like you can tell when someone is excited by what they’re making vs when they aren’t.

• Presentation/Accessibility: Don’t shoot yourself in the foot! This one is a BIG mistake that happens often from what I’ve seen and heard. Make yourself as accessible as possible! Make sure your email and portfolio is on EVERYTHING. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, emails that you send, etc. Resume is important and great sure, but your portfolio will be the first thing the recruiters will look at. Always. Make sure your portfolio is on Artstation! If you have your own personal website, for the love of god, please make sure that it runs VERY smoothly, that it is very EASY to navigate, that your work is CLEARLY displayed, and doesn’t waste ANY of the recruiters time. They’re shifting through hundreds of people, they do not have time to figure out where your art section is on your slow website. Make seeing your work ONE easy click, preferably. The easier it is to see your work, the better mood they’ll be in looking at it. If you can’t bother doing all that, just send them your Artstation. It doesn’t have to be fancy.

• Social media is a powerful tool: Do not underestimate exposure (don’t do work for free folks!). Social media is extremely powerful. I know a lot of people who have gotten a job from Twitter, or from a mutual who they met on there. When I was posting about job searching, I had some really cool people reach out to me to see if I was interested in their studios, and they put in a good word for me! It’s a very small industry, everyone knows everyone, and making your reach that much bigger makes things a lot easier. I later found out from our Operations Manager that I was actually found on Twitter by the owner of the studio. Crazy world. The more people are acquainted with your work the higher chance you have at getting a job. When I was first starting out, I’d post my work everywhere! Artstation, Twitter, Instagram, Polycount, etc. And I’d also apply to every internship I could, even if I didn’t think I had a chance to get it, and I probably wasn’t qualified. This is my personal approach on things, but for me my biggest focus was to be seen. That’s it. Not to get the job or get the attention, but just to plant that seed. Hey, I exist. I am familiar to you. And now you are more likely to be drawn to me as a potential employee. Humans like familiarity, and I think that’s important to keep in mind. I didn’t think this thought process was effective until I was starting to have people in the industry look at my portfolio and be like: Hey I’ve seen this before! Bingo baby.

Biggest Adjustments From Intern At Insomniac To Permanent Position At Valkyrie?

I essentially went from being ahead of a lot of classmates, to being surrounded by industry vets. It can be extremely intimidating and almost discouraging. Starting at both places, I immediately felt impostor syndrome smack me in the face. ”Am I skilled enough to be working on a project this big?” I doubted myself a lot, thinking I wasn’t qualified. I spoke to some people who said some very encouraging things. Eventually I shook it off. Now I’m not gonna sit here and claim that imposter syndrome is forever gone, it creeps up all the time. Especially if I’m doing a task I’ve never done before or that I’m not confident in.

But good news! You’re not / won’t be alone. People who have been in the industry for 15 years still experience this, it’s normal. My biggest advice is: talk to people! Whenever I opened up about it, not only was I told that others are experiencing it too, I was also told encouraging things that helped me work past it! Trust in your employers. They wouldn’t have hired you if they didn’t think you were qualified. And no, you didn’t fool them. They’re professionals and their job is to hire the right candidate. And that’s you!

Does Having Realistic and Stylized Work Help?

I couldn’t tell you for sure, but it definitely helped when it came to both Insomniac and Valkyrie. It all depends on what the studio you’re applying to is looking for. Insomniac has made both realistic and stylized games, their whole thing is they make what they want, and they hire artists who are capable of switching up styles on a whim. Same goes for Valkyrie, because we are doing outsource, we could get any type of project. I was told that they were looking for artists they knew were capable of doing all types of styles. For example if you compare Guns Up!, God of war and League of legends side by side, you can really see the variety in style, platform, technical restrictions, etc. that they’ve worked on.

Ultimately, these styles weren’t on my portfolio targeting a specific studio and I believe that’s what made the difference. I enjoy different types of styles and texturing, and that’s why they’re on there. Not because I was aiming to work somewhere specifically.

What Did You Focus On In School?

I think context matters a lot here. I love learning! So during my time at school I tried a little bit too hard, even when it didn’t matter. My brain was wired to care about grades, so I hunted for A’s in every class I took. And students, as someone who didn’t get one single B during her time in college, let me say that… It wasn’t worth it. A’s weren’t worth losing health over. I’m not proud of it.

A good GPA doesn’t matter in order to get a job in games, hell, school doesn’t matter. If someone’s portfolio is better than yours and they’re self taught, reality check, they’re getting the job and you’re not. A degree won’t change that. So I’m here to say: don’t kill yourself over grades! It’s not worth it. Focus on what you know is important, C’s get degrees.

To clarify, I am speaking specifically about non art related classes. Gonna not put effort into your painting class because it’s not 3D? Don’t shoot yourself in the foot. Any artistic investment is worth it, even if it isn’t 3D it will push you as an employable artist.

Advice To Anyone Starting Or Already In School

If you’re considering going to a traditional college to get into games (bachelor's degree), I HIGHLY discourage it! Unless you’re well off. If you are going into debt for it, please for the love of god save yourself and don’t look back. (Unless you are a foreigner or you plan on working internationally. You need a degree for that sweet sweet VISA.)

Is all school bad? No. And this is the most important part of what I have to say: a 4 year bachelor’s degree at a typical institution is not worth the money. The tuition isn’t worth it. Your degree means nothing. A lot of it will be outdated anyway. What’s important is what you learn — and learning, you can do anywhere, for free! YouTube, Artstation, Gumroad, etc. They have THOUSANDS of tutorials for you to consume all you want. Almost always free or at a low price.

If you’re eager to go to school, I recommend mentorships. Mentorships are way cheaper than tuition, and are probably 100x more beneficial to you as an artist. If you want something more “legitimate”, consider courses online. Or a 2 year program. Just don’t go into crippling debt for any of it, please. School can be great if you don’t know what you want to do or can afford it, you can take all kinds of classes, in stuff you never thought existed. That experience is wonderful, as well as the networking and connections you make along the way.

My point is, college has tons of benefits, it’s a wonderful experience. But you do not NEED it to get a job in this industry, and it isn’t for everyone. Also, for people still in school and who think they’re not learning much: there’s nothing wrong with dropping out. It is not shameful, it is not quitting. I know a few people I’ve worked with / am working with who were dropouts. It doesn’t make you lesser of an artist.

Note: I actually have a TON of advice for students, especially since it’s still fresh in my brain. There’s just too many aspects to talk about. If you’re a student and have any questions at all, please DM me on Twitter: @Sechouafni, portfolio, applying to internships, jobs, classwork, anything! I am open to giving critique or to helping figure something out.

Advice For Graduates

Welcome to the other side baby! You’re alive!

Some people get lucky, but don’t expect a job right out the door. This is so so so important to remember. I know tons of people who didn’t get a job until 9 months - a year after graduating. Do not let this discourage you. If you keep getting rejections, there’s only one answer for you: Keep pushing your work. There’s no secret recipe to this. Don’t throw in the towel and assume you’re not cut out for it. As long as you keep doing it, you will get better at it. It’s a sucky grind, it’s frustrating, it’s exhausting, it’s competitive, but you’ll get there !! Just keep pushing!

And from the wise words of Anthony Jones (one of my favourite concept artists): "The older you are the better you are, the more advantage you have, because as artists we just need more time. With more time and more knowledge — we ultimately become better".

Inspiration

Front page of Artstation and Polycount. Mostly Artstation. I’d go to the front page, switch to trending, turn on 3D and the Environments category, and just endlessly scroll. It’s a great place for inspiration! I have a collection folder of inspiring pieces. I like to take a peek at it from time to time. Check out my inspiration folder!

I also like to find inspiration from the people around me, sometimes I’d get up at work and just walk around and look at everyone’s screens. Creepy I know. But it can bring for some very cool conversations, and I’ve learned a lot by just going “that’s cool, how did you do that?”. Another thing is games, but instead of looking at the game itself, I’d look it up on Artstation. Looking at portfolio pieces is way different than in game! Especially when they post breakdowns of their models and sculpts. Super informative.

Feedback

Nowadays I ask colleagues or friends who are in the industry. But before I used to always post on Polycount. It’s a great community and there’s tons of content archived there that will probably help you. More recently I’ve been more active in Artist/Game dev/3D Discords, these types of communities are arguably even better. Upside to Polycount is there’s way more professionals.

Perhaps, consider checking out our Discord, @TheClubDiscord on Twitter. We are an all inclusive, safe and respectful community. We have beginners, students and plenty of industry professionals online every day. We provide feedback, talk about mental health and hobbies, and even host challenges from time to time! Don’t knock it til’ you try it. Just make sure to keep in mind that this is a small industry and what you say there is seen by working professionals. Don’t say anything I wouldn't say hehe!

Tips and Advice

It’s easy to get burnt out in this industry. Please take care of your health, it doesn’t last forever. A game is not more important than your relationships and well being. It’s not that serious.

Do what makes you happy, there’s good studios and people out there. Do your research, find out what type of place you’re going to before you commit to it. Especially if you’re a minority.

Women, POC, LGBTQ+, etc. Know that in one way or another, you will be treated differently. And that’s the sad reality of this industry, heck, a lot of industries. It’s getting better, but it’s not perfect. Do not let others take advantage of you, speak up. There are a lot of people who will back you up, I promise. There are options, even if it seems like there aren’t.

Part 2: Carousel Environment Breakdown

Concept Art and References

Before starting a piece, it is always good to do a significant amount of pre-production in order to save yourself headache down the line, even if it’s a “small” personal project. I am going to go ahead and explain how I approach this process, which has been heavily influenced by a past mentor of mine, Steven Hubbard. Check out his Demo Reel and IMDB.

Before starting on an environment, it’s pretty important to know what you’re going to make. No, not have an idea of what, but know exactly what. This isn’t something you want to figure out in the middle of production, a lot of time could be wasted that way. In order to start working you need some form of concept art, something made by someone else, or something you made yourself. In this example, I came up with the concept myself. It was a piece I’ve been wanting to do for a couple years, so I already had a lot of time to think about it. It doesn’t have to be perfect, and it doesn’t have to look good. The point is to do a breakdown of all the assets that will be in your scene, and find multiple references for each. As a visual person, I typically use Trello in order to organize this. It is way easier than having a bunch of saved images in a folder. Then I go into photoshop and create a breakdown like so:

As you can see, not pretty! But informative and extremely helpful, plus no one is going to see this (unlike my case right now hah), it’s just for you and for planning. If I don’t have an image close enough to what I’m trying to achieve, I’d photobash or quickly sketch something up.

Planning

After doing this I find that a time tracker, or a time estimate sheet is very important ! How realistic is your project? How long do you think it will take? If you do not set your own deadlines and rules, it is very easy to never finish your project. I typically take each asset into a sheet and type up estimates for how long each step of the process will take, and then I add it up to try and estimate how long the project will take all together. This can also be very important if you want to pursue becoming a freelancer. All in all, knowing how long things take you and adding buffer time anticipating potential hiccups will save your butt down the line. Sometimes it’s safer to overestimate how long things will take than underestimate.

Composition

The next thing I do is try and blockout the composition in Engine. This also gives you a good idea of whether you missed an asset in your list or not. I blocked out the Carousel piece in Maya because my engine wasn’t working at the time, so I will use my Gateway to the Guilds piece as an example instead:

The blockout doesn’t have to look pretty, there’s just a lot of stand-in assets and materials just to get an idea of how everything flows together. It’s important to find a good location for your camera and lock it in. (Accidentally moving your camera while working sucks! Don’t be me and make that mistake!) And then work the rest of the piece to the camera. Figure out whether this is an explorable environment or not. Will the end result just be screenshots for a portfolio to present your work? Or will someone be able to play your level? This piece was just for my portfolio so I was able to hack the set dressing to look best from this specific angle. For example, the clouds in the background in the finished product are literally just a flat plane. If this were seen from a bunch of different angles or played, I would’ve created a sky sphere instead. Know how to budget your time according to what’s most important. Also make sure you have a human scale in there! It will make your life a lot easier.

A lot of the time my composition is decided based off of what I want my hero asset or focus to be. In my Carousel piece, I obviously wanted the Carousel to be the main focus, so I made the composition, surrounding assets, lighting, etc to accentuate that. Lead the eye towards what you want the viewer to see. Don’t accentuate something you’re weak at. For example, I could say that my trees are a bit lacking, but that isn’t the point of this work. The point is to show off my ability to create ornate and complicated pieces.

In the example above I highlighted some things I had in mind when setting up my shot. As I stated you want to lead the viewer’s eye to what you want them to focus on. In my piece it was first the Carousel, as it is placed dead in centre, but subtleties help as well. The way the poles are set up force the eyes to freeze on the hero asset, and then look up at the ornate details. The trees are all leading the eyes towards the centre, the grass is pointing up, etc. Also the bushes are framing the carousel (in blue), and are part of the foreground along with the grass, as you can see I don’t have those bushes in front of the carousel, and the lighting makes you want to look deeper behind the Carousel.

Lighting

In no way am I at a professional level when it comes to lighting. But it is definitely something that can make or break a piece. Lighting is something I work on throughout my time developing the environment. I do an initial pass when blocking out, a pass when replacing the assets and figuring out the final comp, and a final pass when I’m done with the art completely. When lighting you want to keep in mind your hero asset, or wherever you want to direct the eye, as mentioned above. The focus of your piece should be the first thing seen at a glance, and able to be seen from a distance. The best way to tell if you're doing it right is by blurring your piece. Honestly, looking at my Guilds piece (second from the left) blurred I realize that the pillars on the left attract the eye more than the main building. Whoops. This is also your chance to create a “mood” for the environment. This is when I like to add interesting colours to my piece. In the Carousel piece, because the bulbs are lit with a warm light/colour, I chose to add a cool tone in the back to accentuate it more. In the Guilds piece, I chose to do cold tones for lighting to contrast the very orange/warm trees and building, etc. It’s always good to find a balance between warm and cool tones without making them clash.

Story

Narrative is important when it comes to developing environmental storytelling. But the degree of story development depends entirely on the artist and the piece. How deep is your story, what are you trying to get across to the viewer, etc. In my case, I was focused on creating a “feeling” and “impression” vs. trying to say something specific. I wanted a mystical, surreal feel. I wanted things to feel different, but not off putting, sort of inviting. To achieve this I chose to make the carousel fairly clean. I didn’t want it to look brand new, but also not entirely overgrown. I want the viewer to wonder, how long has this been here? What is it doing here? Why is it here? Instead of being able to look at it and just say “oh this was abandoned” and that’s that. I wanted the piece to be a bit more engaging. This is also why I chose to have all the lightbulbs functioning and turned on.

Ornate Details

When it comes to the ornate details, there were a few processes to pick from. A fun approach is this tutorial I stumbled upon on Twitter, which is a super fun way to approach this type of detailing. Another approach is through sculpting from a sphere or cube and then ZRemeshing to get a clean flow, then dividing and adding small details. Another, and the one I mostly used here was using pre-existing brushes found online as a base and then altering them to my liking (most of the time up-resing them). It helped save on time, and can be super helpful.

I believe these are the ones I used in my piece. If I had the chance to go back and do this differently, I probably would’ve created a trim sheet and used that for the entire carousel. But this was a fun sculpting exercise.

Foliage

For creating the foliage, I followed this tutorial by the talented Peyton Varney. The only difference is I took some liberties with the diffuse map. Peyton in his tutorial, created the diffuse in Substance Designer, but I chose to do this step by polypainting in ZBrush. When I was done I exported the maps just like he did, but I also included the diffuse when exporting. Make sure to do a flat render, as you don’t want to export the diffuse with the Matcap affecting it.

When working I created three different versions of the leaves I used to build whatever plant I was trying to achieve. One healthy, one kinda dying and then one in between. This was done in order to create some breakup in the plants themselves. Having the same leaf over and over can make for some repetitive and distracting results.

When it comes to polypainting, I found some refs online to use for colour picking. And then I used ZBrush’s masking functions to utilize my sculpt to save time. I mostly like using Mask by Cavity , Mask by Smoothness and Mask by PeaksAndValleys . These all come with settings you can play around with to get the masks you’re looking for. The advantage of masking by cavity is you can create profiles and/or play with the curves to come up with some pretty cool stuff.

Don’t be afraid to experiment and click on buttons. You can also change up your results by clicking on things like sharpen mask, grow/shrink mask, or even inverse.

This might’ve been my favourite part of the process. You can also use this technique to come up with some pretty fun flowers! Combining different colours using these masks can be very fun. Plus, a quick sculpt will do since all you’re taking is a flat render!

Future Work

Fortunately, my Miles Morales work came out and people were able to see it. However the fun work on God of War is still under NDA…. so…. Be on the lookout! The second that stuff gets announced/released expect me to be shouting it to the world on Twitter. You won’t miss it.

Also, personal work! At first I was balancing online classes, full time work and life, but I graduated in May. So you can expect me to be posting more stuff! Currently I’m doing a “one tip a week” series where I post some of my favourite fun 3D tips. Keep your eyes on my timeline @Sechouafni.