A few weeks ago I started a character art project as part of Art Jam #04 hosted on our discord channel. 

The theme this time was Art Deco/Nouveau and you could either do a Prop, Environment or a Character. 

So to challenge myself, I decided to create a game ready character as I never done that before! 

Current Status of the character!

Project Start

Every project starts with either a concept or a cluster of pictures in a Moodboard, right?! My biggest issue when I don't have a concept is that it tend to get very cluttered with all kinds of things, because I am a scatter brain and I know I will forget about things and feel I'm gonna miss something if I don't. Hence My moodboard tends to grow quite fast into a gigantic cluster of noise.  The below one is just a small fraction of the actual moodboard.

Since I can't draw (yeah like maybe stick figures) concepting and designing is always in quick 3d blockouts, speedmodels and 3d sketching. The pros is that you get a feel in 3d directly, the con is that it is slower. Below are some of the first iterations. I'm using several base meshes for the body and face combined together here, to get a start.

After a few iterations, I figured it would take me a long time to even figure out the design of the whole character and I could easily spend a year on just that.... So naturally I decided to just chop her off in half! Or well in nicer term make an upper body bust and focus on getting that done :)

I think that is better for a first time character project anyway to focus on one part rather than trying to do it all.

After I decided to go for a bust only, I took the base mesh into Marvelous Designer to create the Jacket and the undershirt.

The jacket later got retopoed in Maya to serve as a better mesh in Zbrush for sculpting but also as a start for the lowpoly mesh.

The discord challenge has now ended, but I am determined to continue with this project and finish it :)

Lowpolys, UVs and bakes are done! I have started texturing and there are still some work left to do before it's done. Mostly polish work on the texture and lighting.

Lowpoly + bakes

Lowpoly + Bakes + ID map

Lowpoly + Bakes with wireframe

First texture pass
  

I also feel it's a bit mundane and boring with all the brown leather, so I have started looking into expanding it to a smaller prop scene. Like adding herbs, spices etc to get some color contrast going. Both herb in the bottles but also scattered outside. As well as adding funny labels.

Thing I consider adding below:

Pot Diorama

I finally managed to get the Pot Diorama done! Phew it took a while but I can now close this chapter of my life and move onto the next project. 

Check it our here if you haven't already!

Doctor's Saddle Project!

I started this one a while back when I was running the ArtJam03, but as I went back to finish the Pot Diorama I had put this one on hold in the meantime. Time has now come to finish this one as well, before moving on to something entirely new. 

I'm currently adding the final details of the sculpt before moving onto some good ol' retopo aka making the lowpoly.

Reference Board for the Doctor's saddle bag.

Maya block out mixed with finished highpoly base for sculpting. I usually make my blockout and highpoly in Zbrush only, but since this one had very straight shapes and could be easily done in maya with curves I used a bit more old school method this time.

Highpoly screen grabs from Zbrush
  

I'm on Patreon!

Yes! It's true! I started a Patreon site to more easily give back to all my supporters! I never felt that the Twitch emotes were enough as a thank you.

In the future I want to explore more content for Patreon, perhaps trying a mentor program? or make small tutorials? I'm currently asking around to see what people would be interested in and what an reasonable amount would be as compensation. 

So if anyone reading this, have any suggestions or comments for content, please drop a line below and let me know :D

In addition I also decided to start a store at Cubebrush

Just made the first small drop, Stylized Plank IMM Brush. Which Btw are free for Patreon Hero Supporters :3

Stay safe everyone! <3

Third community Art Jam has come to an end! As with previous Art Jams the participants got to choose between the three concepts below. The rules are simple, to make a game ready assets that either looks like the reference or to interpret in their own way!

The Art Jam was running from Feb 27th to April 26th and you will find the amazing submissions below! Don't forget to check out the artists and give them a follow and/or like! Or even drop a comment! <3 We all knows that being recognized brings a smile to our faces :D

Concept Art: Anna Shulgina, Svyatoslav Dobrovolsky and from a Live auction house

Submissions:

Gnarly Potato

Ditte Galsgaard

Robert Paseka

Magnus Evertsen

Yoshua James

Boris Gubanov

Woah! Time fly fast! Like it's been month since I updated my art blog! :O

Twitch Stream

Let's start with a big announcement! I am now streaming on Tuesdays and Thursdays 9pm CET!

A new thing I want to try is to theme the streams. Reason is that I want to allocate time to work on personal projects as previously, but also learn new skills and softwares that I seldom have the time to do. So .... 

Tuesdays - Project Art aka working on personal project in the same fashion as before (environment, diorama, props etc) 

Thursdays - 'LevelUp w Aavachan', I will be learning new skills myself, softwares and just trying out stuff that I have no idea how to do.  

Stylized Taurus Chest

I finished my Taurus Chest Streaming project! Stylization is always something I enjoy very much doing so as always it was really fun doing this piece. More Final renders can be found on my Artstation page :)

 

Concept Art was based on Elena Savchenko awesome render and design!

Streaming Project 

So the current streaming project I'm working on is a mini Pot Diorama. I found this cute fountain that has a couple of pots stacked on top of each others. I started this one just before summer vacation and figured I would continue the adventure with it on Tuesday streams. Below are some WIP from the past streams as well as the reference. So How did you start? Glad you asked! :D

I started by doing a blockout in Zbrush with Zmodeler, once I had proportion and shapes nailed down I continued by sculpting some rocks. My favorite part of sculpting rocks are using Trim Smooth Border and Clay Buildup! I love hand sculpting rocks so I seldom use Alphas. After the rocks were done, I experimented with hand drawing some lines on the pots, at first I figured that I would just tile a line pattern with height info in substance painter, but I had too much fun to not sculpt it. I also started adding some insect, trying to bring some extra life into the scene.

LevelUp with Aavachan Stream!

As my first LevelUp Stream i decided to go for Substance Deisgner. I never really get the chance to properly test out the program and just sit down and learn. So I figured, what's an better way of learning than streaming and being coached by the chat! Huge thanks to the entire chat for keeping me company and giving me some really useful tips and tricks!

I will try to keep these Art blog a little bit more up to date moving forward! It's also a great way form me to track my own progress as well :3

"Det va länge sedan!" As we would say in Swedish. It's been long hours of work in the summer heat, but there's finally lights in the end of the tunnel. It started quite hectic for me, 5 moths at DICE have passed by in a blink of an eye. Battlefield V is almost done, and we can finally start going back to our everyday life after work.

Yesterday I started streaming again (Yes finally after being radio silent for a while!) I have a new streaming schedule that I will update now and then, but for now I will mostly keep it on Tuesdays. Hopefully I will be able to squeeze in some more days here and there.

(Speed sculpt of a ham on a plank stabbed with a knife! Why?! Well hat's how my throat felt yesterday due to my cold)

So as a new fresh start of the season I decided to start on a new project! I saw that the artstation challenge started again and considered participating in one for real this time. But! Since I'm quite aware that life has it's ways of getting-in-the-way, I decided against it. Instead, while pondering on what to do next, I looked at my old student work and thought "urk what the actual f--- did you think when you created this":

(4 year old student piece, that I will remake with my new mastered skills!!)

Some of you have probably seen it on my Artstation page and/or portfolio. It is an old student project of mine, 4 years old now (☉_☉) (time just fly!!) We had to make something for the Zbrush course in school (yes I was learning Zbrush with this piece) and I was also panicking as I needed something for my portfolio. Quixel came out at that time as well, so I baked it down on dirty geo and just slapped on procedural materials, put a light in marmoset and voilà! ¯\_(ツ)_/¯  So what's with this story then? Well! My new project is to make a new diorama with the same type of theme, Nordic (but proper Nordic and no "mumbo jumbo"... can anyone see the Asian inspired dragon in there...*face palm*) So starting next week, I will stream while working on a brand new project :)

Cheers! <3

First blog post here at Artstation!  I have a lot of updates I want to share, but who would read a 5000+ word long blog post, right? So I decided to link my recent articles I have been working on and then just start to use this blog to post frequent updates!

So I quite recently released two articles at 80LV! It covers the methods and know-how of our approach to the stylization in realism of the art in Apex Construct as well as one for VFX and animation breakdown.

Apex Construct. Part 1: Stylization in Realism

Apex Construct Part 2: VFX, UI and Animation in VR

If you are interested in reading more about realism and stylization, I wrote an article last year covering my take and methods for working with realism and stylization. It's an article I wrote as a summary of my breakfast talk I held at DICE, If you like to read it you find a link below!

Realism vs Stylized

Speaking of DICE, many thought when the article was first published (and a lot of people asked) that I was an Artist at DICE. At that time I was still working for Fast Travel Games, developing Apex Construct. Well I am very excited to say that I am actually starting to work at DICE in May! So hopefully I will be sharing some cool stuff from there the coming year!