#assignment6

Which one is better?

I thought that writing the dream job as disconnected letters can deliver the meaning that the baker was not able to complete his dream and work his dream job; however, Arabic is usually written in connected letters to be easily understood. So what do you think?

Zbrush

Getting started in Zbrush, I blocked out her main shapes and added a little bit of polypaint to try and get her overall form clean. I initially made her top too long as I hadn't checked the proportions with the reference image effectively, so spent a while mulling over her overall volume. I’m also debating whether to start with having the different materials on her blazer as separate subtools this early on, or divide them up once I already have a clean base to work from. I initially assumed that they were separate items of clothing, but then later realized they are just separate pieces of fabric/colour. The hat and hair have very complicated forms, so I tried to get their shapes with more resolution (sculptrus), before lowering them down to clean up, but I was struggling to get the shapes I wanted. Again I am focusing on just the torso for now. Primarily I have been referring to Arcane’s character sculptures - they are very clean with minimal surface texture, other than a few key folds, then much of the detail is later made up in the texturing phase. I want to aim to get this clean level of finish, since this concept lends itself very well to the arcane style, even if I don’t make quite as many painterly decisions in my texturing phase. I am relatively happy with how she is turning out, but having some issues with getting the complicated shape of the hat, and clothing folds produced appealingly.

Reference list

For our 6th and final assignment of the developing skills practical, we have been tasked with researching the benefits of, and entering a game art competition in our area of specialism. I already have a few years of industry experience, and so I don’t qualify for many student only competitions, such as the Rookies - which are excellent competitions, especially for students getting their foot in the industry. Recruiters scout the winners and honorable mentions when hiring juniors with enthusiasm, passion and skill - it's a fantastic achievement to stand out from the crowd on applications - not only demonstrating skill, but passion for the craft.

The competition I have chosen to research is the Artstation community challenges. They frequently have an overarching theme for their challenges, with then separate prizes and entry requirements for different categories, aka, character design, environment, real time character etc. What I particularly like about these challenges, is the concept art categories start 4 weeks before the production categories. This means that the production artists (aka, real time character creators) can base their models off other entries in the concept art category, since they will have submitted their final entries by this time, which functions much how the industry itself does.

These competitions are free to enter, and individual participants have about 4 weeks to complete their project. The details of the 2022 competition which I will be following is taken from the official page and reads as below:

“Dragon's Rise: The Forgotten Realms – Game Character Art Brief

In this category you will create:

One (1) game character from the Dragon's Rise: The Forgotten Realms challenge rendered in a real-time engine (eg. Unreal Engine, Unity, CryEngine, Lumberyard, Toolbag), with no paintovers, and a maximum polycount/tri-count of 100k.

Two 4K texture sets (with multiple maps like albedo, spec, gloss, normal, emissive) can be used for the character. A base/pedestal can be included with a polycount of 30k or under and a 4K texture map.

The game character will be presented in a real-time rendering application (Unreal Engine, Marmoset, Unity, Sketchfab, etc.) with at least three (3) views of the character (front, side, back), along with a callout sheet of elements such as wireframes, normal mode and texture maps.

Deliverables

One (1) beauty shot in-game render of your character (with pedestal if necessary) at your preferred angle presented in a real-time engine or viewer. 1,920px+ on longest edge. e.g. landscape should have 1,920px+ width, portrait should have 1,920px+ height

Presentation shot: your character from different angles which can be posed in a minimum of three (3) angles (front, side and back).

A callout sheet presenting the major elements such as wireframes, normal mode and texture sheets.

Work-in-progress artwork to prove that your game character was created in a real-time environment, eg. Unreal Engine, Unity, CryEngine, Lumberyard, Toolbag.

Judging Criteria

Game characters will be judged on creative details, personality and execution of the original concept. The game characters will embody the fantasy realm they come from and will tell a compelling story which produces an emotional response. Strong composition, modeling, texturing and lighting will also be crucial components in an entry’s success.”

Benefits

There are tons of benefits to entering the Artstation community challenges to advance your career. It shows employers that you can handle real world briefs, meet short deadlines, and break down your work clearly, demonstrating you have created a real time character - not just a pretty render. Lots of hiring managers check out the finalists and entries to the competitions - there is a lot of impressive work, and creating a strong entry will make you visible to exactly the right people.

Alongside why blogs are important - artstation challenges give entries the opportunity to show thought processes and wip updates, showing that you can work non destructively and respond to feedback is very appealing to recruiters. Even if you don’t win, taking part in the community, sharing feedback with others and posting WIPs will still give you a large networking presence among the challenge participants and onlookers - being an opportunity to get scouted. Receiving real world feedback on your own work, and taking advantage of the artstation learning while participating will often also lead to a great portfolio addition.

Many of the past winners of the artstation challenges are already successful artists well known within their network with grand portfolios. However, it also gives budding artists visibility to studios - during an interview with Sierra Mon, for Artstation Magazine, Tony Sart talks about his experience. His entry into the Legend of King Arthur Challenge got an honourable mention, and his career really took off after this - several studios reached out to him with opportunities after seeing his work - most noticeably Cornbilt Games, whose new game’s artstyle matched Sart’s entry perfectly. They initially contacted him to buy the rights to the 10 characters he designed for the competition, and then commissioned him to do lots of further work for their game LocoMotives. He would not have had the opportunity to work with Cornbilt Games, had they not seen and been inspired by his entry.

Another notable example is Maarten Hof, who in an interview with Pavla Karon for CGCookie reportedly said, after winning the Artstation challenge, ‘Beyond Human’, he got a lot of emails from different studios who wanted to talk about potential positions. He said he thinks he got his consequent job because he really showed his production process during the challenge, so employers could see the way he worked.

Practical

Since the production character art competition required you to only use concepts for your character from yourself, or specifically other entries within the competition, I have decided to use the concept of ‘witch’, from Bergamotik 1137’s entry into the character design category: https://www.artstation.com/challenges/dragons-rise-the-forgotten-realms/categories/159/submissions/66833 

What I particularly like about this piece is the exaggerated, overlapping shapes of her clothes, with a striking silhouette! It also gives the opportunity to explore some hard surface props, as well as slightly complex falling hair. Since I don’t have the full 4 weeks for this project, I will stick to just the bust for now, and try to get that modeled and textured.

To start my work, I broke down the concept and collected reference images. I had found two other artists who had also brought this beautiful concept to life, and I'm excited to put my own unique spin on this idea. Both the other two entries are far more stylized and smooth then what I want to go with, they are fantastic reference for when I get stuck on imagining something in 3D, but I won’t be relying too heavily on them for inspiration - since they wouldn’t have existed at the time of entering this competition, and part of a character artists work is to understand the concept, and work from the initial design. In terms of specific reference for how I imagine this character to look in 3D, I will be referring to Arcane’s character designs. The painterly planula feel would work really well with this concept, and something new I’m excited to try! So I have collected a lot of specifically Arcane reference photos to refer to with their grungy stylistic choices.

There are two aspects I’m not super clear on concept wise - it looks like the witch has a long fluffy tail behind her, however that doesn’t seem super consistent with rabbit inspired ears. There is an odd shape I’m assuming is a thin bit of paper floating in front of her, but not clear what purpose it has - or if it's the dragons’ tail poking around. The ears also don’t seem as though they are actually connected to the witches head, but an additional attachment to the hat itself, since we would have seen her left ear connect through the hat if this were the case. Or they are very squished down on top of her head, under the hat, connecting at the far back of her head which I feel is less likely, and pretty uncomfortable. 

Reference list

Game Character Art (real-time) (2022) Available at: https://www.artstation.com/challenges/dragons-rise-the-forgotten-realms/categories/167/briefing (Accessed: 16 November).

Bergamot 1137. (2022) Character DesignDragon's Rise: The Forgotten Realms. Available at: https://www.artstation.com/challenges/dragons-rise-the-forgotten-realms/categories/159/submissions/66833 (Accessed: 16 November).

Karon, P. (2018) Maarten Hof: "Talent is just a tiny fraction of an artist's story". Available at: https://cgcookie.com/posts/maarten-hof/ (Accessed: 16 November).

Mon, S. (2019) How Participating in ArtStation Challenges Can Benefit Your Career with Tony Sart. Available at: https://magazine.artstation.com/2019/07/tony-sart/ (Accessed: 16 November).

Arcane (2021) series 1. Fortiche Production. Available at: Netflix (Accessed: 15 November 2025).

Maxon (2026) ZBrush (2025.0.1) [Computer program]. Available at: https://www.maxon.net/en/zbrush?srsltid=AfmBOorJo6WNgjM_iOXdP_V_eeq-OBMmY6_u-81UJBX7_fIv8RpFy4ic (Accessed: 17 November 2025).

This time, the theme is storyboards. I know what a storyboard is, but I don't have much experience drawing them. So, I first went to Pinterest to see how storyboards are done in different works. So, I went to Pinterest to check how storyboards are done in different works.

After getting a handle on storyboards, I started thinking about what kind of storyboard I wanted to create.

After some thought, I decided to use the theme and characters of Assignment 2 - Rebirth to create a storyboard for the beginning of the game. I originally wanted to continue the worldview of Assignment 2 - Rebirth since I have many more ideas for this theme that I want to express.

After picking a theme and figuring out the storyboard, I checked out some game openings on YouTube to get ideas. After watching a bunch, I noticed that the more impressive game openings share a few key elements:

High interactivity: Players can take control of the game character right from the beginning, becoming part of the game-opening experience.

Complete transitions in a short time: The game opening balances telling a story and keeping things concise.

A game opening needs to consider the player's time and should not be too long. Players usually look forward to starting the game quickly, so a lengthy opening might cause them to lose patience and concentration.

The challenge is How you quickly immerse the player into the game world while telling a story with a complete sequence of events? That’s one of the most important objectives to achieve at the start of a game.

When I started working on the storyboard for Rebirth, I used the simplest way to quickly sketch out the story and images I wanted to convey. Then, I drew the final version based on that draft.

This is a storyboard about a dead person who wakes up in the world between the dead and the reborn. He's unsure where he is, but white lines spread out on the ground as the protagonist takes his first step. The protagonist follows the lead of the white lines and keeps running forward.

On the way, he keeps seeing his look-alike shouting at him: "Why don't you choose me?" "Are you sure this is good enough?"

The monsters chase the main character to a cliff, and he falls onto a platform in the air. When the main character wakes up, the white line is gone, but the main character is still guided by the only path before him.

At the end of this journey, the main character encounters the god of rebirth in this world. The main character remembers everything he's done during their interaction—good and evil. As these memories overwhelm him and he begins to pass out, the god of rebirth pulls him into the pool of rebirth and helps him to be reborn.

Honestly, I made this work mainly because I've always been self-critical and not confident in my personal growth., much like the monsters the main character faces as he evolves. I didn't become a different version of myself in a different time and space; I think they're all better versions of me. They're always telling me:

"Why don't you try harder?"

"Why can't you do anything right?"

"That's why I didn't show up in that reality!"

The white line the main character encounters on the ground represents the timeline. The timeline that becomes reality is the thickest, while the timelines that don't are tiny and faint.

Project 6

"This feels like a nice point to reconnect with drawing and simply being creative"

I have stopped just being creative in this simple way but I would like to go back and just draw and see what happens. I cannot be denied that I want to do it with purpose not just as an exercise.

You mention that it is interesting to think about the lives of these unknown people, and I think that as you were playing with image and text this would have been a good opportunity to flesh out some possible narratives to go with them

This seems like a light and fun idea while embroidering the other project. I work better when I do several things at the same time. I do not mean multitasking (it does not work) but working on two projects can help me to break the monotony and enrich the work.

Project 7

It is important that you question why you are using embroidery specifically

I will write an entry for this but I think it is a combination of factors, some are not just related to the project in hand but a way to find my voice.

Your financial freedom illustration ideas are most promising,

I am happy that you think that because I love the idea. I am thinking of using only ink and starting a sketchbook just for this idea. Perhaps trying to work a subtle idea...

Overall, considering that this part encouraged you to seek feedback from your peers and work for an audience, there isn’t a great deal of evidence of this happening.