3D Character & Prop Artist on Working on Batman: Arkham Shadow & Star Trek Prodigy: Supernova

Introduction

My name is Ana Sánchez Castro, though my friends know me as Nana, and I'm a 3D Character and Prop Artist. I currently live in Madrid, Spain, but I'm originally from Andalusia. I work as a contractor for Grip Digital Studios as a General 3D Artist working and I also teach at U-Tad University in Madrid.

I originally studied Fine Arts because it was the only option that really caught my eye at the time, and back then, studying video games was still something very new and quite expensive that I couldn't afford. Over time, I was able to fund a master's in organic modeling with ZBrush focused on figure sculpting, and that's when my curiosity really kicked in.

From there, I started self-teaching all kinds of workflows and processes related to video games, which is what I've always truly been passionate about.

Throughout my career, I've had the chance to work on several games, all quite diverse in style, many of them released, others that never saw the light of day. I really started enjoying my work on The Last Kids on Earth and the Staff of Doom. I was quite young back then, and I learned a ton from the people around me, plus I got my first real taste of developing for consoles with heavy performance limitations.

Star Trek Prodigy: Supernova felt like a breath of fresh air at a time when I really needed it. I could focus purely on creating characters, and I absolutely loved that. Every game I've worked on holds some meaning for me, but I'm especially proud of having contributed to Batman: Arkham Shadow. Having had the opportunity to work with a team like Camouflaj, being surrounded by an amazing work environment and incredible colleagues, and seeing the game you worked on listed among the best VR titles at The Game Awards brings an indescribable emotion.

You realize that all the effort and hard work paid off, and being recognized worldwide, it's an incredible feeling. Being part of a Game of the Year contender is an achievement I'll always cherish.

Working on Batman: Arkham Shadow

Honestly, I've loved Batman since I was a little kid. I used to read the comics we had at home and play Batman Returns with my brother on the Sega Mega Drive. So when I got the chance to do the art test and eventually join the team, it was cause for celebration both personally and professionally, not every day you get to work on something you genuinely love.

The aesthetic and artistic style of the Arkham series is very distinctive and really amplifies Batman's story in every way. I think we can all agree on that. Specifically, Batman: Arkham Shadow draws from earlier entries like Arkham Asylum. The biggest challenge was translating that look to the Quest 3 hardware, given the technical limitations. You have to be extremely mindful of optimization.

Thanks to the hard work and effort from the entire Camouflaj team, along with the strong artistic direction from Matt Kohr, we achieved a great balance between technical constraints and visual quality, really pushing the Quest 3 to its fullest potential. Matt's guidance and the concept team's thoughtful approach made the 3D team's job much smoother and more enjoyable.

I initially joined the 3D team to create environment assets, but as they got to know my work, I ended up taking on a large portion of interactive assets and character-related props. I worked closely in tandem with the design and programming teams to make sure everything moved and functioned as intended.

I handled everything from breakable walls and environmental assets to Batman's own Batarang, creating all the interactive states and possibilities that VR offers for these objects. Most of my time was spent on player-triggered interactive assets, but whenever help was needed in any other area, I was always ready to jump in.

I have a special fondness for certain assets, like the weapons, the Batarang, the rat collectibles, the injector, the laser cutter, the punching bag, or the poster you hang in your cell. Since these are interactive objects, they're a bit special: I created the blocking, rigging, blendshapes, and simple animations when needed, along with the high-poly and low-poly models, UVs, textures, engine implementation, collisions, etc.

And I have to say, the concepts were so cool that I wish I could have created every single variant!

When you're working on a game with such a big name behind it, a lot of things are already very clearly defined. You have tons of references to draw from, so you know exactly how bright or dark a texture should be. Still, as 3D Artists, we work hand-in-hand with the Concept Artists, unless it's something very simple.

The concept team studies and provides all the necessary information we need as 3D artists. Their concepts serve as our guide for the exact feeling an object should convey. Having strong references and images to rely on is something we do on every project. If we want to stay true to the style, we need a crystal-clear understanding of the game's vision.

Just because an asset works in concept art doesn't automatically mean it will work in 3D. But we start from the assumption that the object's silhouette and forms are solid. If it works in 2D, we move to a blockout (or greybox) to test whether the feeling of picking it up or interacting with it feels good. Once that's solid, it's about recreating the same sensation from the 2D concept in our 3D model through shapes, textures, and polish.

Interactive assets are handled differently because of movable parts and baking considerations. But if you're meticulous and run all the necessary tests, you'll see whether the elements work, whether the textures, specular values, etc., hold up in the rest of the scene when you put on the VR headset. The view and feel are different in VR, so checking everything you create becomes one more mandatory step at the end of an asset: putting on the headset to make sure it all looks and feels correct.

Working on Star Trek Prodigy: Supernova

The Star Trek style has its own unique soul, it's PBR-based, stylized, and features touches of hand-painted artistry. Personally, I love hand-painted texturing and feel very comfortable working in that style. In this case, it was helpful to use a high-poly base as the foundation for the painting process in the characters and apply pleasing gradients when texturing that align perfectly with the color palettes used throughout the game.

To adapt to any style (especially when working with major IPs), you need to do thorough research on how to translate graphical aspects into the engine. For Star Trek Prodigy: Supernova, this was made possible thanks to the excellent work by the entire team at Tessera Studios. They conducted solid research and pushed the visual development as close as possible to the TV series's look in the game.

Recreating and following the series' style through the concepts of Tessera Studios was a really fun task that I enjoyed immensely. The high-poly models were created in ZBrush, while the low-poly modeling, retopology, and UVs were done in Blender, and texturing plus baking in Substance 3D Painter.

I was in charge of creating different characters, enemies, bosses, and "new" allies (characters that didn't have any references and had to be done from scratch). For that, the Tessera team was responsible for developing concepts and establishing an appropriate artistic direction to ensure that the new character designs aligned with the game's theme and IP. We work side by side to get the best possible result, keeping optimization of the game in mind at all times, considering that it's available on all consoles.

Working on a stylized game is fundamentally different from working on a realistic one. The entire pipeline changes. In modeling, for example, a high-poly in a stylized project is much more "expressive". You can exaggerate thicknesses, push volumes, play with proportions, and treat surfaces in a much more playful, graphic way. It's less about perfect anatomical accuracy and more about creating strong, readable shapes that read beautifully even from a distance.

The same shift happens in texturing. The way you paint and emphasize details is completely different. In Star Trek Prodigy: Supernova, the hand-painted look is quite bold, with strong highlights and pronounced gradients that help the volumes pop on screen. Everything seems otherworldly. In contrast, on something like Batman: Arkham Shadow, the approach becomes much more subtle and grounded. We still use Curvature Maps, of course, but they're applied very delicately.

The focus moves to realistic wear and tear: thinking about where the material would naturally scratch, rub, or get dirty, then blending everything with carefully crafted masks to create that lived-in, believable look. It's a much more restrained and layered process compared to the bolder, more graphic treatment you can afford in a stylized title.

Techincal Details

Regardless of the asset, character, or environment I need to create, the first thing I do is search for references and analyze the concept or the model I have to make. Creating a Pure Reference board or a Figma file that helps you gather all kinds of images helps you get unstuck if, for example, something isn't represented in the concept art.

Once we have our references and concepts clear, we need to assess whether the model requires a high-poly version or not. Sometimes, depending on the purpose of the model, the style, or the camera distance, we might not need to create a high-poly for the bake. If we do need to create a high-poly model, depending on the style, I would work with Blender and ZBrush using different subdivision levels and start by creating floaters if any specific ones are needed, and none have been previously created in the project.

Once the high-poly model is ready, I begin retopology. If it's a character, during the high-poly stage, you start evaluating and seeing where potential issues might arise. Although in my opinion, the ideal for characters is to make a quick blockout or very rough sketch of the main volumes and test whether it will cause problems in animation with the rig, or if things might clip depending on the movements.

Once everything is clear, we proceed to create the retopology while keeping the poly limit based on the target platform for our model, and we create the UVs with their corresponding overlaps, mirrors, straightening, and optimizing each UV space to match the texel density, and if necessary, create a second UV channel if the asset needs a lightmap. If everything is correct, we name everything and prepare it so we can start baking tests and enjoy painting our model.

Personally, I love creating my own smart materials for characters because it helps me a lot when I'm in a production, whether small or large. If the production is large, that responsibility usually falls on Material Artists, who provide you with tools and functionalities to keep the style consistent throughout the entire production. Once painted and textures exported, we implement them in-engine and check that everything looks correct, and check materials and collisions. Also, it's worth mentioning that the workflow often changes depending on the studio we're working in.

Insights Behind the Workflow

I think the most important technical aspect is knowing how to distinguish good references and building a solid moodboard with everything well organized. It's key to properly break down every aspect of the asset, environment, or character you're creating so you have no doubts and can move forward without getting stuck. If you have enough knowledge and something isn't shown in the concept, that's fine. That's exactly why you do reference research, so you can complement the concept with other references.

For example, when working on a weapon, it's very helpful to ask yourself good questions and search for references based on those, to solve things like:

• What parts does the weapon have? Does it resemble any real-world equivalent or something already created in another game?
• Do we need to consider moving parts? If so, do they expose other parts?
• Is it interactive? How does it function? Does it have triggers, buttons?
• How does reloading work, and how would that affect the model and animation? If it’s paired with VFX, is there anything we need to take into account?
• Does it have decorative details or ornaments? Search for references in a similar style.
• Will the details be modeled? Baked? Done in texture via alphas?
• Look at weapons in similar art styles to see how they solved certain aspects.
• Search for textures that can serve as inspiration when creating your own.

Both in texturing and modeling, starting from good references makes your life much easier. If you're working on a hand-painted game and your specific weapon has wood and metal, the ideal is to look for reference models and textures with those materials and then analyze how they handled the specular highlights, how wear is represented if there are signs of use, and how scratches or marks are done.

I don't think I have a workflow that's very different from most artists. I firmly believe in starting with the forms, silhouettes, and volumes. If those work well in 360° even without details, then once we add the detail and texturing, we're almost guaranteed to get a good result.

Conclusion

For me personally, the biggest challenge of working as a 3D Artist is finding the right balance between my job, treating 3D as a hobby, staying up to date with all the software updates, and still having a real life outside of it. When you truly love what you do and enjoy being a 3D Artist, it often doesn't even feel like "work". The hours just fly by. But over time, you have to become very organized to avoid spending every waking moment in front of the screen and to maintain a healthy work-life balance.

I'd say that if you want to pursue this professionally, you need to have a very open mind. In this industry, sometimes you'll work on games you're passionate about and others that might not excite you as much, but even in those cases, you learn a tremendous amount. My other big piece of advice is to stay updated as much as possible.

New software updates and features are constantly coming out that make our lives easier, so learning them and staying open to trying new tools and programs is a great way to keep progressing technically. And before we start going into detail, make sure you have a good shape.

Ana Sánchez Castro, Senior 3D Character & Prop Artist