Old Man Stylized 3D Character Made With Blender & ZBrush

Introduction

My name is Ariel, and I'm a Character Artist for animation. I got into 3D after playing Bioshock – I was completely mesmerized by the atmosphere and art direction, and it made me want to understand how characters and worlds are built. I enrolled in 3D school in 2018, and that's where I started.

After finishing school, I jumped around a bit between games, animation, and VFX before eventually settling into animation. I'm really glad I had the chance to experience all three. The core skills overlap, but each industry emphasizes something different – games taught me to be organized and think about efficiency, film sharpened my eye for detail, and animation strengthened my sense of shape and appeal. These different experiences all helped shape me into the artist I am today.

I have participated in big and small roles on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Resident Evil 4 Remake, Street Fighter 6, Damsel, The Witcher, and Sandman.

Inspiration

Professor was originally a concept by Jules Rigolle, a talented Concept Artist from France. I was immediately drawn to the exaggerated shapes and the grumpy expression – there was so much personality in the silhouette alone. It felt like a character that would be really fun to translate into 3D.

I started this project about a year ago, around the time 2D-style rendering in Blender was becoming more popular. I wanted to use it as an opportunity to explore the workflow and get more comfortable with Blender in general. It was partly a technical experiment, but also a way for me to push stylization further and see how closely I could capture the charm of the original concept in 3D.

Before diving in, I'd like to share some observations from my time in the industry. Both realism and stylized projects are a lot of fun, and while the fundamentals are the same, artists who take different routes hone different skills. In realism, the focus is on sculpting and observation – capturing accurate forms, textures, and subtle details. In stylized projects, the emphasis shifts to creating strong, interesting shapes that work from all angles while keeping the model clean and appealing.

Here's my workflow, along with some explanation on some differences between stylized and realism that I think will be interesting to share.

Blockout

Before starting the project, I took some time to analyze the design, breaking it down into big shapes and deciding which parts should be sculpted geometry and which could be textures. I also considered which features are symmetrical and which aren't.

I started blockout with simple shapes like spheres and cylinders. For stylized projects, I usually work with Dynamic Subdivide and almost never manually subdivide – keeping a very low polycount makes it easier to make big changes quickly. I also keep each piece separate and only combine and DynaMesh once the blockout is finished, before bringing it into Maya for topology.

At this stage, I mostly use the Move and Smooth brushes. Unlike realism projects, where Claybrush and DamStandard are my main tools. Here I rely a lot on the Deformation tab – especially Polish by Group, Polish by Feature, Relax, and Inflate. For brushes, I mainly use Move and Pinch, sometimes ZModeler for shape flexibility.

Below is a list of brushes I used for this project and some of my custom setup in ZBrush for easier reach.

I move quickly through the T-pose because most shapes are finalized after posing. At this point, I'm focused on getting the right proportions and overall volume. Since the face in the concept is symmetrical, I spend a bit more time there, defining creases and forms to prepare it for topology.

Topology

Topology is especially important in animation – that's something I learned the hard way when I first started working in the industry. Compared to VFX or games, animation is much less forgiving. The topology needs to be very clean to support smooth deformation, especially for facial expressions.

For this particular project, since it's a 2D-style render and not meant to be animated, I didn't push it to full production standards. I did just enough to hold the shapes and achieve the result I wanted. Since no displacement maps are used in my stylized projects, the topology itself had to carry the forms. Wherever I needed sharper creases, I added extra edge loops to support them. This is something I don't do for realism projects, where displacement maps do most of the work.

Posing

It is important to observe the relationship between the sharp angles and the round angles. They should work together and complement each other, giving an interesting balance. Some bumps are shapes used to break up a straight line. Balancing all these elements is the trickiest part, especially when we rotate the character. Some angles we don't have concepts to follow, that's when we need to experiment and find the best shape that works.

Curves

This is actually a skill I picked up from my time working on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I use Curve Snap and Curve Flat, Curve Snap if I want the whole curve to snap to the surface, Curve Flat if I want it to paint it flat from my camera perspective. For tapering, we can go to the Curve modifier and change the size parameter. For more thickness variation, I use a Pinch brush afterwards to reach the look.

Texturing

Texturing is rather simple. There's no roughness or specularity that I need to take into consideration. I do my best to replicate the texture of the concept. The process involves a mix of painting and projecting, some back and forth between Blender and Photoshop.

I brought my own alpha brush into Blender that gave me a more painterly effect. I do a quick brush-up to get all the color blocked in. Then I move to Photoshop, where I have more brushes and more control. I would also paint in the brown crease lines to imitate the outlines we see on the concept. This is a process I would go back and forth between Blender and Photoshop.

For the shoes, I tried to project the texture directly from the concept art. For this, I suggest checking out this YouTube tutorial, which has a very detailed breakdown on how to do this. I recommend anyone who likes to create stylized character texture:

After the texture is done, I plug in an alpha map and dig out the torn part of the shoe. This alpha map is painted in Blender.

Rendering & Lighting

There's no lighting involved in rendering this project. The style of the concept is very painterly, so all the shadows are hand-painted, and the images are rendered in EEVEE.

I added a layer of free-style lines. This outlines the silhouette; without it, the character becomes very hard to read.

Conclusion

The biggest challenge for me on this project was learning Blender. As a long-time Maya user, the navigation felt confusing at first and really pushed me out of my comfort zone. But Blender has some amazing features Maya doesn't, like Grease Pencil and Freestyle lines, which I had a blast exploring. I'm still learning and excited to explore further.

As for advice to beginners, I think the most practical thing I can say is to have fun. This career comes with a lot of challenges – technical struggles, self-doubt, never-ending tutorials, long hours of practice – but if you genuinely have fun making things, that enjoyment will carry you through the difficult moments. Skills take time, but curiosity and enjoyment are what keep you moving forward.

Ariel Chen, Character Artist

Interview conducted by Gloria Levine