Stylized Portraits With ZBrush & Substance 3D: A Quick Guide

Introduction

Hello, friends! My name is Daria Karpova – I’m a Character Artist. I started with courses, practiced a lot on my own at home, and of course, I learned even more after landing my first studio job at quite a young age. Working in a studio gave me the skillset I rely on today. The journey was tough, but no less exciting. I worked on some amazing projects like Diablo 4 and Lords of the Fallen. Now I’m part of a wonderful outsourced team. We mostly work on realistic characters, but personally, I love exploring new areas and creating stylized projects.

I decided to write about this project because many people ask how to achieve a similar result. This is my first article, and I hope you find it useful!

One day in the London Underground, I noticed a man reading a book full of silly trivia – the kind you’d usually find in a friend’s bathroom. He looked incredibly serious and concentrated, which made the situation genuinely funny. The image stuck with me, and I wanted to recreate this man in 3D.

I wanted him to be stylized – so viewers would immediately feel that he’s more than just a person, but a character – a persona. My goal was to achieve uniqueness through sculpting and texturing. The project needed to blend 3D and 2D, with the kind of charm that brings back childhood curiosity and draws you deeper into the story. This style was new territory for me, but exploring new tools and software to create something unique is exactly the kind of challenge I enjoy. Curiosity and the desire to outdo myself are what keep me growing as an artist.

References

The first thing I do is figure out what exactly attracted me to the character. I take the joke apart down to the bones. The contrast is obvious: a serious, professor-like man reading a book full of ridiculous facts. Don’t get me wrong – I love that kind of trivia! So the idea was to push his seriousness even further, and at the same time sprinkle in more silly details.

The second thing to do when starting a new project is, of course, gathering references. It takes time to build a clear image – both in your head and in PureRef (a super handy tool for reference boards, highly recommend). I browsed through ArtStation and Pinterest, saving everything that matched the idea I had in mind. I also took close-up screenshots of details from photos and other artworks that could be useful later.

It’s important not to drown in a sea of images, so I break them into groups, scale the key ones up, and delete anything extra – it keeps the board clean, and keeps me from getting lost in it. I usually pick 2-3 main references for sculpting and 2-3 for texturing, no more. This helps keep the idea whole and gives a steady direction throughout the process.

Of course, I looked at works from Arcane, Spider-Verse, The Witness, and El Jíbaro by Alberto Mielgo. They’re stunning – all of them built with that painted, almost 2D texture aesthetic, which was exactly what I needed for this project. Once the board feels right, I trim it down – fewer images, but sharper focus.

Sculpting

I knew this would be a bust, so the main focus had to be the facial expression – something calm, almost monk-like.

I recorded the entire sculpting process, so you can watch it in time-lapse if you want. (Rewatching it actually helped – I realized I was spending too much time chasing a perfect topology too early)

Here are my tips for this stage:

• Start with big shapes.
• Stay low-res for as long as possible – it’s easier to control form.
• Don’t panic if the model looks rough early on – that’s normal. The beginning almost always looks low-quality. 

When I work on stylized models, I rely a lot on DynaMesh>Polish. It redistributes the mesh and sharpens edges, making form exploration easier.

My most used brushes: ClayBuildup, DamStandard, and TrimDynamic. For clay-like surface detailing, I used this brush pack.

The book and jacket were made using ZModeler, as it allows for quick and precise shaping of hard-surface forms and structural elements.

I sculpted the head in symmetry mode for as long as it made sense, then turned symmetry off, tilted the head slightly, and added asymmetry by hand. Real faces are far from perfectly symmetrical, so there’s no need to constrain yourself – those subtle differences give a character more life and personality.

Bake

I made a retopology pass and split the model into several UV sets. Since this wasn’t meant for a game engine, I could use as many sets as needed. 

Final split:

• Head + hands
• Clothing
• Book
• Mustache + brows 

Total: 4 sets.

One of my close friends and colleagues, Natalia Melkina, shared a great trick with me: before baking, slightly boost the contrast of your sculpt. It bakes much cleaner this way – the maps become more readable and pronounced, and working with them in Substance 3D Painter gets noticeably easier.

Path: Tool>Deformation>Contrast

I also added a Convexity Map. It helps me bring out the edges, bulges, and form transitions, which strengthens the stylization and makes the materials read much better.

And here’s what it looks like – not for the faint-hearted!

Here’s the set of maps I needed:

• Normals
• Normals(Object)
• Positions
• Curvature
• Convexity
• Cavity
• Thickness
• Ambient Occlusion (AO)
• Vertex Color

Texturing

I also recorded the texturing process for YouTube, so you can watch it in more detail there. Here, I’ll talk about a few things that are harder to notice in the video.

There’s a color-distribution rule for the face that I often rely on when texturing. It helps make the skin feel more alive and natural – even in stylized projects. The idea is simple:

• The upper part of the face (forehead + T-zone) tends to be warmer or slightly yellow due to a higher amount of subcutaneous fat.
• The cheeks, nose, and ears usually look more reddish because the skin is thinner and blood vessels sit closer to the surface.
• The lower face tends to be cooler or slightly bluish, especially in the stubble area in men.

I like to think of it as the flag of North Holland, in the Netherlands – red, white, blue. Maybe this comparison will make it easier to remember!

This scheme works really well for breaking the face into color zones – especially when you’re working with a stylized character. The main thing is balance: don’t push the saturation too far, so the character stays expressive and still feels natural.

And here’s another little trick to make the model visually richer: Use an HSL filter with a speckled mask and boost the Saturation.

Here I switch the HSL filter on and off to show the mask:

I used the same approach for the jacket. The illustrations on the jacket and the face were also done through HSL – just make sure to enable Path mode, otherwise the filter won’t apply.

Another tip: Paint more by hand – it brings life into the work! I found the book cover online, then redrew it in Procreate, and finished it in Substance 3D Painter. I really love how that bright green turned out! 

That little fact on the open page is just something I remembered from somewhere – it came to mind, felt right, and I added it. It’s about how video games once helped people in a way no one expected, but that truly mattered.

Render

For the video, I created a separate train cabin model. I added walls and a ceiling as well – this is important for believable light bounce and realistic shadow play. The cabin has no retopology – it’s just a Decimated mesh for rendering.

In Marmoset, I set up a subtle cabin sway to mimic train movement: chug–chug… pause; chug–chug… pause…

I created a Directional Bulb Light inside the cabin, and outside the window, I added animated flickering lamps to evoke the feeling of a tunnel rushing by.

Then I placed a camera (you can see it in the GIF) and recorded the video:

For the main still render, I painted the subway car wall in Procreate. And finally, I composited everything together: static render + background + hand–drawn details in Photoshop.

Conclusion

Working on Man on the Subway was both exciting and incredibly insightful. I hope you found something useful or inspiring in this breakdown as well! Thank you for taking the time to walk through my process. You can find more of my projects here.

Daria Karpova, Character Artist