USE 3D MODELS IN YOUR CONCEPT ART

Misa Steinmetz explains how she incorporates 3D techniques into her 2D workflow, creating this month's cover painting

- Misa Steinmetz

I started my career just with digital painting, but over the years I began to incorporate more and more 3D techniques to speed up my process. Having a solid understanding of the art fundamentals and 2D skills is essential, but learning how to use 3D – even in a basic way – is very useful for producing quick iterations and making amendments when working with clients.

3D has been incredibly useful in all of my concept art and matte painting work in animation, games and movies. Knowing how to use 3D helps with passing your work on to other departments, creating more images in a shorter amount of time, and working in a nondestructive manner for potential changes.

Blender has been my 3D tool of choice because it’s free and there are so many tutorials and resources online available. There are many more 3D tools to learn such as Unreal Engine and 3DCoat, but I always recommend Blender as a starting place for your 3D journey.

It can be easy to get sucked into spending too much time in 3D and not progressing on your piece, but I’ve found that going between your 3D scene and painting over in 2D helps a lot, and for this workshop I’ll be sharing my process of creating a simple 3D blockout to push to a final painting in Photoshop.

Create thumbnail sketches

Once I have a couple of references for my painting organised in PureRef, I start sketching some thumbnails. I draw rough lines first to indicate the fore-, mid- and background, and then paint a quick value pass on top. For this piece I need the focal point to be on the right-hand side of the image, so I focus more on producing variations with secondary shapes throughout the left-hand side and the midground.

Build and light a rough 3D blockout