Creating a Game-Ready Character with an Arcane Aesthetic

Introduction

Hello there! My name is Ricardo Sánchez Moreira, and I'm a 3D Character Artist from Costa Rica, currently based in Madrid, Spain. I entered the games industry in 2022 after studying 3D Animation, where I discovered my passion for sculpting characters and decided to focus my career in that direction.

Games have always been a big part of my life, and getting the opportunity to work in this field is a dream come true. I began my professional journey at Polyart Studio, where I contributed to titles such as Cloudheim, Play Planet X, and others, as well as internal projects like the Dreamscape Series on FAB.

The role required me to wear multiple hats, working across characters, environments, rigging, and animation, which helped me build a strong technical and artistic foundation. In early 2025, I transitioned into a freelance role with Fair Play Labs as a Character Artist, where I now work full-time on cool game projects, primarily focused on character art while occasionally supporting environment work.

Sharpshooter

I had known Alexis Boulivet's Sharpshooter concept for a while, and it was one of those designs that stayed with me as something I really wanted to bring into 3D at some point. I started this character after completing a CGMA course with Weston Reid, who offered me the chance to continue learning through private mentorship.

I saw it as the perfect opportunity to tackle a hero-shooter style character and push my quality bar while moving closer to the kind of stylized hero design seen in games like Overwatch or Marvel Rivals, while getting feedback from a pro artist.

I was also strongly inspired by the art direction of Arcane and Ruined King, which influenced the overall artistic direction. One of my main goals was to explore a balance between hand-painted texture work and PBR workflows, keeping materials grounded while still allowing for painterly stylization and personality.

During the mentorship, Weston provided valuable feedback on the sculpting stage as well as technical aspects like topology flow and UV organization, which helped shape the foundation of the character and deepened my understanding of AAA character work. Even after the mentorship ended, the approach and insights I gained there continued guiding the rest of the project.

Efficiency played a big role in this project, so I built as much of the model as possible directly in ZBrush. I relied heavily on the ZModeler brush and, after getting past its initial "quirkiness," it became a powerful tool for blocking out and refining hard-surface and clothing elements without constantly jumping back to Maya. This helped me establish clean forms and edge flow early, which made retopology much smoother later on.

I used this same approach for the hair, outfit, and gun: starting from simple base shapes, focusing on strong silhouettes, and gradually refining secondary and tertiary details. By investing more thought into the early modeling stage, I reduced cleanup later and could move faster into the more fun parts of the process.

Retopology & Texturing

Since I did much of the heavy lifting in ZBrush, many assets entered the retopology stage with a solid foundation. Following Weston's advice, I combined the upper and lower outfits into a single mesh to make the deformation cleaner and more rigger-friendly.

This came with challenges, especially with the multiple belts wrapping around the body and the large folds in the pants that were important for preserving the silhouette. I began with broad, clean edge loops and then added supporting geometry on top, ensuring the structure would hold up well in motion. All retopology and UV work was done in Maya.

For texturing, I split the character into several materials and UDIM texture sets. While UDIMs aren't typically used in games, this being a portfolio piece allowed me to push resolution and material definition. The UVs were still laid out with efficiency in mind, so they could be repacked into fewer textures if needed for a real-time production setup.

Since hand-painted textures can be very time-consuming, I focused on building a workflow that combined procedural help with manual painting. I started by studying references and breaking down how volumes and color variation were handled on Arcane and Ruined King.

After laying down base colors, I used several generators in Substance 3D Painter, like world space normal and AO, to establish initial lighting and volume. These worked closely with my ZBrush sculpt and bakes, which carried much of the form information. From there, I layered hand-painted AO and light information on top, which helped me define the stylized look.

For the skin, hair, and other materials, the process became more manual. I built up forms using painted light and shadow on top of the generator layers, leaving some brushstrokes visible to preserve texture personality. Subtle hue shifts were used to create color variation without breaking the lighting structure.

To do this, I painted colors using the same value with a hue shift. I also added soft bounce lights and selective highlights in key areas like the face and hair to guide the eye and enhance readability.

One of the biggest challenges was balancing stylization with believable materials, pushing color and painted contrast while still grounding everything in the underlying PBR structure. Metals in particular took me a while to get right, and for cloth, it was a matter of adding different light values so it felt like they were made out of different materials.

Lighting

The lighting setup was based on a classic three-point light configuration, which gave me a solid foundation for readability. I added rim lights on both sides to better separate the silhouette from the background, along with a few subtle point lights aimed at the face and weapon to guide the viewer's attention.

Because the textures were hand-painted, lighting had already been "pre-baked" into the materials to some degree, so the real-time lights were used mainly to enhance and support the painted information rather than define it entirely. I rendered the character in Marmoset Toolbag 5.

Most of the adjustments were done through tone mapping and subtle post-process tweaks to balance contrast. I also tweaked roughness values directly in Marmoset to better control material definition under the lighting, ensuring metals, fabrics, and skin reacted in a way that supported the stylized yet grounded look I was aiming for.

In this case, I didn't do any animation on the character. I posed my game-ready mesh directly in ZBrush using simple masks.

Conclusion

One of the main challenges was finding the right balance between hand-painted textures and PBR workflows while still aiming for a hero-shooter quality bar. I focused heavily on a clean silhouette, color harmony, and value readability so the character wouldn't just look appealing in a still image, but feel like someone you would want to play as in a game.

On the technical side of the project, it was also a great exercise in applying solid fundamentals: clean topology, thoughtful UV layouts, and working within practical constraints, which are just as important as the artistic side, and finding ways to do more in less time.

A big takeaway for me was learning to analyze my own work more critically and understanding how small technical decisions can have a large impact on the final result. My advice to beginners would be to stay consistent and patient with your growth, improvement comes from repetition and deliberate practice, not talent.

Learning to accept feedback and develop an eye for your own mistakes is essential. And most importantly, try to keep the process enjoyable. That sense of curiosity and fun is what keeps you motivated and gives your work personality.

Ricardo Sánchez Moreira, Character Artist

Interview conducted by Gloria Levine