During the creative process, the context of a material is extremely important. I always start with a certain environment in mind and then break down the different components within. It ensures that the created materials will offer flexibility for the user.

For this Signature Series, I decided to focus on three themes: desert, jungle, and Iceland. I wanted them to have visually different identities and, for personal growth reasons, I wanted to choose themes that I hadn’t really explored before. Within each theme, each material needed to be striking enough to stand on its own without sacrificing harmony with the other materials.

The goal was for each Substance material to be diverse and customizable in order to highlight the true power of Substance Designer over other static media formats. I wanted to give the end user more control by adding useful, tweakable parameters. The parameters I enabled are inspired by what would naturally occur in nature, such as snow melting, leaves accumulating, water levels rising, erosion, etc.