DESIGN A MECH CONCEPT SKETCH

Procreate & Nomad Sculpt | Glen Southern shows us how to block out a mech using 3D tools, which can then be used as a reference in Procreate

- Glen Southern

For most of my career I’ve been creating 2D drawings that will eventually be transformed into 3D. In this tutorial, I’m going to take a look at using a 3D blockout from a program called Nomad Sculpt, which you can find on the iPad, then taking that as my reference to work up a painting in Procreate. I love this approach because I can take simple primitive shapes and use them to define the look of my character very quickly. In this case, it’s going to be a Gundam-style mech design. I can then use that 3D blockout to try things like lighting and composition before I ever turn to my preferred painting program.

Being able to work out all the complexities of perspective and overall composition before even starting to sketch means that I can start detailing my design quite quickly. Once I have the design locked down I’ll then start using a very reliable method of layer management that I use in almost all of my work, and it was a system I was using with Photoshop well before the iPad came along. Having the hard stuff worked out with a 3D program allows me to relax and enjoy sketching and painting even more. Plus, the good thing about having a 3D blockout is that you can pose it and try different angles and lighting styles with relative ease.

1 Block out with Nomad Sculpt

Any 3D sculpting package can be used for this part of the process, but I like to use Nomad Sculpt on the iPad. It’s cheap and flexible, with lots of different tools to create the kind of shapes we would want for this project. I found some great reference for Gundam mechs, then proceeded to block out my ideas.