Creating a Stylized 3D Character in a 2D-Illustrated Look with ZBrush
David Papunashvili discussed the workflow behind the Punk Knight project, explaining how he projected the 2D concept directly onto the sculpt for reference and color matching, and detailing how he used PolyPaint to paint the character.
Introduction
Hi, I'm David Papunashvili, a 3D Character Artist. My journey into art started when I began drawing at around 12 years old. As a shy kid, drawing became my way of expressing myself and connecting with others. Over time, that passion naturally evolved into creating video game characters, leading me to pursue a career in character art.
After graduating, I joined Big Bad Wolf Studio, where I worked for three and a half years. During that time, I had the opportunity to build the studio's Character Art pipeline from scratch and explore emerging technologies like MetaHuman.
Today, I work as a freelance Character Artist. I enjoy creating characters and exploring the technical side of Character Art, always trying to make my workflow more efficient.
Punk Knight
Punk Knight started as a personal challenge I'd wanted to take on for a long time. I always loved 2D art, and I've always been fascinated by Arc System Works games like Guilty Gear, where the line between 2D and 3D almost disappears, and Punk Knight felt like the perfect opportunity to finally explore it myself.
Choosing the right concept is always one of the most important things. I was looking for something stylized, with bold, readable shapes. That's when I came across TimBougami's work; his style immediately clicked with me.
References
Before sculpting, I usually gather a variety of references. In this case, however, my goal was to match the concept as closely as possible, so the concept itself became my primary reference. I imported it into ZBrush's Spotlight, which gave me much more flexibility than using PureRef alone. Being able to move, scale, and adjust its opacity directly in the viewport made it much easier to compare my sculpt with the original artwork. Spotlight also lets you sample colors or even project them onto the model, making the painting process much faster.
Materials/Shaders are probably the most important part of achieving a convincing 2D look in 3D, so I like to set them up before I even start sculpting. Having the right visual feedback from the beginning makes the whole process much easier. The material I use the most is Flat Color. Since it removes all the lighting information, it lets me focus purely on the silhouette, the shapes, and the color balance.
Of course, sculpting entirely with a flat shader isn't ideal because you quickly lose the sense of volume; that's why I will often switch between Flat Color and a regular sculpting material. To make it quick, I keep them both next to each other in the material palette. One small tip: make sure your mesh doesn't have a material assigned to it. Otherwise, changing the active material won't affect the whole model. If you accidentally paint material information on your mesh, simply fill it with the Flat Color material to clear the stored material data.
Modeling
The modeling process itself was fairly straightforward. For a project like this, the most important aspect is getting the shapes right. One trick that helped a lot was projecting the concept's colors onto the sculpt early on. It made it much easier to place folds accurately while staying faithful to the original concept.
Another tip that helped throughout the project was setting keyframes of my main camera angles using the Timeline (you make it visible by clicking on Show in the Movie/Timeline window). This made it easy to jump back to the same views at any time while sculpting.
For the hair, I started with a simple low-poly mesh, creased the edges to keep them sharp after subdivision, and used the Bend Curve transformation to position each strand. Once everything was in place, I simply subdivided and polished the mesh to soften the surfaces while preserving the overall shape.
PolyPaint
PolyPaint is where I spent most of my time on this project. Since my goal was to complete everything entirely in ZBrush, there was no need for retopology or UVs.
Before painting, I usually duplicate and tweak the default PolyPaint brush. Set the focal shift to around 90 and change the RGB intensity with tablet pressure to make it flat. This creates a cleaner brush with sharper edges. Also, don't forget to subdivide the mesh enough to get a comfortable painting resolution, since the PolyPaint is vertex-based.
Spotlight becomes especially useful at this stage.
I constantly display the concept, sample colors directly from it, and sometimes project it onto the mesh as a starting point. The projection is rarely perfect, so most of the work is still done by hand. Polygroups are another great time saver, especially when painting hard-surface elements, as they make it much easier to isolate different parts of the model.
The background was a bit trickier. Because of the perspective, it wasn't possible to recreate it exactly in 3D. Instead, I used a simple plane with the original concept applied to it, removed the character from the image, and hand-painted the missing areas that had been hidden behind the character. For the eyes, I like to spend a bit more time on the painting, as they play a big role in bringing the character to life.
To compensate for the lack of eye shaders, I pushed the iris slightly inward to fake refraction and added a separate mesh to simulate the eye reflection. Lastly, I painted the outer edges on the mesh itself using the outline color because the cell shading method I use only generates outlines from the mesh's silhouette (since it's just the same mesh inflated and flipped out).
Line Art
Line art plays a huge role in making a 3D model feel like a 2D illustration.
To create the line art, I start by duplicating the mesh and merging everything into a single DynaMesh. This gives me a clean, continuous surface that's much easier to edit (and it also helps prevent mesh intersection issues). I then flip the normals, fill the mesh with the color I want my line art to be, and finally inflate it slightly.
At this stage, I have my outline, but it looks pretty boring because the line thickness is the same everywhere. To change that, I refine it using the Inflate brush and the SnakeHook with AccuCurve enabled. This lets me tighten the corners and control the line thickness, resulting in outlines that feel much closer to a hand-drawn illustration.
Renderings
All the renders were done directly in ZBrush using the Flat Color material to achieve a completely unlit render.
ZBrush doesn't use anti-aliasing by default, but you can enable it in the document window. Keep in mind that this reduces the document size by half, so it's worth increasing the document resolution beforehand to compensate.
For the background, I just changed the color to match the reference.
I also created the turnaround video directly in ZBrush using the Timeline feature. Shift+Clicking the orange timeline bar plays the animation, while Ctrl+Shift+Clicking records it. Before exporting, make sure to hide the title image and enable Doc mode so the UI isn't captured in the final video.
Conclusion
This project came together very spontaneously, mostly during my free time. I never approached it with a production mindset or tracked the hours I spent on it, so I honestly couldn't tell you exactly how long it took. That freedom made a huge difference. Instead of focusing on efficiency, I could simply enjoy experimenting and seeing where the project would take me.
As artists, it's easy to lose sight of that feeling. When a hobby becomes a career, something that once brought excitement can gradually turn into deadlines, pressure, and stress. Working on Punk Knight reminded me that creating art should still be enjoyable, just as it was when we all began.
