Texturing and Storytelling. Pocket Watch.

In 2020, I decided to start my journey into Texturing and LookDev, experimenting a lot and learning on my own. 

My journey: Since the age of 5 that I've always been very curious about textures. I remember always wondering: What makes a texture more interesting than another one? What is the story behind the texture? How come specific shapes behind the texture drive the eye more than others? What makes or breaks a texture? 

2020 was the year that I discovered Mari, a very powerful program to texture cartoon and photorealistic assets. I fell in love with it because of its powerful tools to do hand-painted and what I call 'raw/hand-made' texturing. What I love about it is how it feels like I'm doing hand-crafted projects, when I texture in Mari, everthing feels very natural and personal. I lose myself inside of the program, in the best possible way.

The Pocket Watch is the first asset I textured. It was also my first time using nodes. The base model (not mine) belongs to the project 'The World of Lost Things'.

I was in charge of doing the Displacement ornaments in Zbrush, Texturing in Mari, LookDev in Arnold and Maya, with the final Lighting, and brief Compositing in Nuke. I chose the final look for the model. 

The look: finding a balance between cartoon and photorealistic, with a vintage touch.

I try to keep the base texturing procedural to be more efficient, and I break with those unnatural masks by projecting my own as well as adding hand-painted details. It's important to add hand-painted because at the end of the day, that's your 'signature', and how you'll be able to drive the storytelling of the shapes. A computer won't do that, it's all up to you! That's why Mari is so powerful.

The oraments where added manually. In some areas I decided to not use the mirror option so I could work on making the object appear a bit more asymmetrical; I find asymmetry more visually appealing.

Original concept (not mine):

This project is not only about Texturing and LookDev, but also about storytelling. It's my first full project as a Texture-LookDev-Lighting-Compositing artist.

As in for now, I'm tapping more into layering/material buildup with some experimental sculpture projects, using the models by 'artofpoligone' (https://www.instagram.com/artofpoligone/?hl=es). Stay tuned!

Hope you liked my work as much as I loved working on it.