MODEL FIGURES WITH PERSONALITY USING BLENDER

Discover how to create a stylized character with Blender and Substance Painter

- Diana David

In this tutorial you’ll learn how to create a cool stylized character. We will cover everything you need to know to produce a professional-looking image for your portfolio in Blender – modelling, sculpting, texturing, rigging, hair particles, lighting and rendering.

The concept art of the character, Milo, was done by the artist Rodrigo Wolff for a 3ds Max course by the Brazilian Mascoteria School. You should check them out because they have fantastic work. I decided to use their cool concept art and make a proof of concept to convince myself that Blender is a good replacement for my beloved Softimage (yes, I’m that old school!).

Bear in mind that this is quite a big project if you’ve never modelled a character like this before, so take your time. There is no deadline here. For me, this process took five full weeks of work that were spaced out along my free time, but for some people it could take less time and for others it could take more. This is not a race. All that matters is the final result.

01 INITIAL BLOCKING

Import the concept art as image references (using the Add menu on the top of the viewport). Create several UV spheres and use them to block out the main proportions of the character using only the scale, rotate and move tools, and sometimes, if needed, move the vertices around in Edit Mode. You can also use other geometric objects like cylinders for the neck and torso. This stage is very important, because if the proportions are not done correctly the model will look strange later on.

02 MERGE THE MESHES