Modeling and Texturing an Interesting Hand-Painted Game Ready 3D Character

Introduction

Hi everyone! I'm Darena Georgieva, a 3D Artist based in Bulgaria. Although I started my creative journey as an Illustrator, I discovered my passion for 3D while studying Game Art at ARC Academy. The combination of artistic expression and technical problem-solving instantly clicked for me.

I've been working professionally as a 3D Artist for around two years now, and one thing about me is that I always love a challenge. Whether it's participating in Hardcore Game Jams, experimenting with new ways to improve my workflow, or sharing my passion for games with others, those experiences are what keep my love for this craft alive.

Stinger

When gathering inspiration for a new project, my process is pretty simple: I look for something that makes me think, "Wow, that looks awesome. I'd love to see it in a game." That was exactly my reaction when I came across this TOART-STUDIO artwork, created by 孙庆龙.

The character's charm instantly drew me in, but beyond that, I always try to approach every project as an opportunity to challenge myself and learn something new. The intricate armor and hand-painted details made this design especially exciting to tackle.

The Beginning

Every project I take on starts with my favorite game to play as a 3D Artist: "What Did the Concept Artist Mean by This?" That's where building a good PureRef board is essential. I spent quite a bit of time analyzing the original concept art before gathering additional references that I found helpful or inspiring.

I know the phrase "learn the rules before you break them" has been repeated a million times, but I've found it to be especially important when working on stylized projects. Understanding how things function in reality is a huge part of making stylization feel believable.

For Stinger, my main focus was understanding how the different armor parts would work together. I studied their overall shapes, placement, and the way they intersected by looking at real-life armor references.

One trick I've picked up while working on stylized characters is using cosplayers as a reference for problem-solving. Those people are wizards. If someone can build a fully functional six-foot-tall suit of armor out of cardboard and foam, then surely I can make mine feel believable in the engine.

I moved on to gathering references for the textures. I studied how the concept artist approached the different materials and tried to identify their real-life counterparts. One detail that immediately stood out to me was the teal coloring on the larger armor pieces, which reminded me of the Statue of Liberty's iconic copper patina.

Even though my goal for this project was to stay as faithful to the concept as possible, I always find it helpful to study other hand-painted works as well. I took inspiration from Arcane, Jinx Fixes Everything, and Wayfinder, paying close attention to how they handle materials like metal, rust, and cloth.

Modeling

I decided to stick to Blender as my software of choice for this project. I really enjoy the flexibility and efficiency that Blender's non-destructive workflow provides, especially when working on symmetrical hard-surface characters like this one.

I started by putting together a simple blockout. At this stage, my main focus is the overall silhouette and proportions of the character. I've found that incorporating vertex paint early on helps me stay much closer to the original concept throughout the process.

During the refinement stage, I took full advantage of Blender's non-destructive tools, particularly Instancing and the Mirror Modifier. I also relied heavily on the Solidify Modifier across most parts of the model. This workflow saved me a huge amount of time when dealing with repeating symmetrical elements like the thigh plates.

When it comes to stylized hair, I prefer working with curves because they allow me to adjust the silhouette very quickly and non-destructively. For this project, I applied the same technique to the cape as well. Ever since I discovered YanSculpts' workflow for creating hair in Blender, it's become something I incorporate into almost every project of mine.

The final step was modeling the weapon while keeping in mind which details could be pushed into the texturing phase instead. Since this project leans heavily into stylization, I was able to skip the high-poly stage entirely. With hand-painted assets, my rule of thumb is that if a detail doesn't significantly affect the silhouette, it can usually be painted in by hand.

UV Unwrapping

My UV unwrapping process was fairly straightforward. Before starting, I made sure to apply any Modifiers I no longer needed. In the case of the weapon, I wanted both sides to share a perfectly symmetrical texture, so I unwrapped it first and applied the Mirror Modifier afterwards. The final character ended up at around 50k triangles in total. The mesh uses three separate 4k texture sets — one for the armor, one for the cloth, and one for the weapon.

Texturing

I've experimented with quite a few different hand-painted texturing workflows over the years, and I've found that the approach that works best for me is generating a good procedural base and then manually painting on top of it. For anyone interested in this workflow inside Substance 3D Designer, I highly recommend this in-depth tutorial by Abe Leal 3D.

I started by baking my maps, which I then used to set up my values. Working in black and white first helped me focus entirely on contrast and readability before introducing color. When creating hand-painted assets, I always switch to the Base Color view to make sure the textures still hold up properly in unlit environments.

Adding color on top of a grayscale base can be surprisingly tricky, since many techniques tend to produce a muddy or desaturated result. To avoid that, I used Gradient Maps with my Values folder set as an Anchor Point. This introduced subtle hue variation in the shadows, which immediately made the textures feel much juicier.

Once the base colors were blocked in, I used a Stylization filter to give the surfaces a more organic feel. I experimented with different settings while constantly comparing the results to the original reference. Some variations looked visually interesting, but they introduced far too much detail, which would have made the manual painting stage much harder later on. In the end, a more subtle approach worked best.

Now for the fun part — the actual hand-painting.

My main goal here was to stay as faithful to the original concept as possible while maintaining the same level of quality in the areas that weren't visible in the reference image. This is where all the research and reference gathering I did earlier really paid off.

Once everything was set up, I grabbed the Basic Hard brush and started painting. What helped me most during this stage was understanding how each material reacts to light differently. Even within a heavily stylized workflow, materials still need to feel believable.

To me, the defining characteristics of this style are sharp edge highlights, subtle color variation, and strong dark outlines. Keeping those elements consistent throughout the model helped tie the whole piece together visually.

Rigging, Posing, Lighting, and Rendering

After finishing the textures, I returned to Blender for the final stretch of the project. I put together a simple rig that would allow me to pose the character as close to the original concept as possible — nothing too complicated — just enough to achieve the presentation I wanted.

I created a set of unlit renders to showcase the textures in their full glory. To achieve that look in Blender, I used the exported Base Color maps and plugged them directly into the Emission Color with a strength value of 1.

Although it wasn't part of my original plan, I really wanted to place the character into a more atmospheric environment to further emphasize its gloomy aesthetic. To introduce some subtle roughness variation across the materials, I connected the Base Color map to a Color Ramp, then into the Roughness channel, which helped create a more interesting surface without losing the hand-painted feel.

I kept the lighting setup fairly simple overall. My main focus was on emphasizing the shadows cast by the layered armor pieces. To preserve their crisp, hard-edged look, I used a Spotlight as a primary light source.

Conclusion

This project took around three months of my free time outside of work to complete. Although my goal was to stay as faithful to the original concept as possible, I made a few adjustments to improve the functionality of certain elements and ensure the design translated believably into 3D space.

Modeling all of the individual armor pieces was definitely one of the more time-consuming parts of the process, but it all felt worth it once I reached the texturing stage. This was easily the part I enjoyed the most. I've found hand painting to be one of the best ways to combine my background in illustration with my work in 3D, and those final brushstrokes were what truly brought the character to life for me.

One thing this project reminded me of is how easy it can be, as a creative in the industry, to fall into the trap of endless optimization — constantly searching for ways to be a faster and more efficient worker. More than anything, Stinger encouraged me to slow down and enjoy the process of creating.

Darena Georgieva, 3D Artist

Interview conducted by Amber Rutherford