Creating a Stylized 3D Character Based on a 64×64 Pixel Sprite from Pokémon

Introduction

Hello everyone! I'm Paul Thureau, a 3D Artist based in Finland, specializing in stylized characters and hard-surface assets for video games and animation; I have a soft spot for cartoony and stylized shapes mixed with realistic PBR texturing.

Pokémaniac

I just recently finished Pokémon LeafGreen on Switch, and immediately jumped on this project! I always thought Pokémaniac’s sprite in FireRed/LeafGreen was so cool, so I had to do something about it.

Pokémaniac was a bit different from my usual projects: most of the time I either work from existing concepts/artworks, or (more rarely) I design the characters/props myself. In this case, it was somewhere in between, with my main reference being a single 64×64 pixel sprite from the Pokémon Gen III/Game Boy Advance era. It was a fantastic exercise in interpreting and translating 2D into 3D.

This process made me realize just how much detail and personality they managed to fit into so few pixels (64×64). It's very easy to imagine what the characters look like: interpret the shapes, volumes, and even material properties – and all the poses and silhouettes are striking and recognizable as well.

The biggest challenge at this point was to define the art style for it. I wanted to find the right balance between realistic material rendering, stylized proportions, anime, and Pixar's classic look.

I made sure to add some flavor and easter eggs from the character across the Pokémon franchise. It allowed me to fill in the blanks and ground the character a bit more in the lore.

Modeling

I usually work with neutral poses, but this time around I went on and modeled/sculpted everything already in pose instead. Since roughly 70% of the character is made of fluffy plush material, I wanted all the folds to look right for the final pose. Also, I think the pose and silhouette are such key elements of the character that I didn't want to risk proportions and shapes looking off when posing an overly advanced model.

It started with a super simple rigged mannequin to explore and find the right pose, proportions, camera angles, and so on. From there, I just started building it bit by bit.

I had lots of fun making all those chonky folds for the plushie elements of the outfit: most of the character was made with SubD modeling inside Blender, but then I imported all the fabric elements into ZBrush to sculpt the folds.

 I mainly used a mix of SK_Cloth, SK_ClayFill, and GIO brush for those. (I recommend checking Kirill Senzu's method for sculpting stylized folds.)

Texturing

The eyes' setup was fairly simple, except for a bit of shader work on the cornea reflections. There are probably much better ways to get parallax in shader nodes, but this worked well enough for my needs.

I added SSS at a very low scale/thickness (0.01) on the orange fabric. It goes a long way toward making the fabric feel more tangible and also enhances sheen (I used the direct sheen from Principled BSDF), while making the normal map less sharp and "in your face."

Rendering

Since I wanted natural lighting for this character, I ended up relying a lot on HDRI and having a fairly minimal lighting setup.

One of the perks of Blender’s Eevee is how nicely it handles HDRIs nowadays. With its own ray tracing system and HDRI sun shadows, you can get really great results pretty much in real time.

While Eevee doesn't always perform well with large environments or dynamic shots, it's awesome for lookdev, especially for stylized assets.

Conclusion

Turning a small, beloved sprite into a 3D character was tons of fun. It was a great exercise in interpretation and in keeping things simple and readable. Chances are I'll do it again someday!  Another excuse for this project was that I really wanted to play around with (and stress-test) Blender's Eevee. I'm always impressed by how solid a renderer it has become over the years.

Thank you for sticking around and tolerating my Blender Eeveengelism. Now go and turn some cool sprites into 3D models too!

Paul Thureau, Senior 3D Artist

Interview conducted by Amber Rutherford