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🧨"BOOMBOOM!" 🧨

Like I said before, this was a test run for something I hope to do in the long run.

For this, I wanted to play around with some mixed media techniques - mixing 3D art and animation with 2D animation to produce 2D animated art. I’ve only done it once before and I’ve been meaning to try it again. Still on the learning path with my 3D animation while my 2D animation skills are a quite rusty. Thankfully there are lots of animated VFX sprites sheets on the web that can be used for reference and I’m not afraid to admit that I definitely made use of one of them to help with the 2D explosion animation.

Overall, this is the start of something I hope to keep going and learning from. That being said, I’ve decided to turn these little experimental personal projects into a sort of mini series that I can share on my social media. The working title for them is “Squiggly Iconimations”.

There’s no overarching theme to these icon animations. I was heavily inspired by the cool animations you see of props in 2D or 3D style mobile games.

I’ve seen a couple examples of them while browsing Pinterest for inspirations and always wanted to challenge myself to try and make some of my own, purely for the sake of learning something new and fun.

I’ve definitely missed dedicating time to experiment with pushing my art and current skills so it’s nice to get back on track with that.

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Tools Used: Valence3D (Ipad) | Maya 2024 | Adobe Substance 3D Painter | Marmoset Toolbag 4 | Photoshop CC 2019 ———————————————————————————————————

♦ SQUIGGLY ICONIMATIONS ♦ Reward Vault | HammerTime

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SC (2025)

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🔨"HammerTime!" 🔨

Stop! Hammer Time!

Another one to add to my growing collection of 2D style game art and animations but made with 3D. Making 3D look 2D is my jam and this is great way of learning and continue to polish my 3D animation skills.

Sorry if this is starting to get a little repetitive of me.

But, what can I say? I’m having a lot of fun doing these and overall enjoying the experimental creative process.

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Tools Used: Valence3D (Ipad) | Maya 2024 | Adobe Substance 3D Painter | Marmoset Toolbag 4 | Photoshop CC 2019 ———————————————————————————————————

♦ SQUIGGLY ICONIMATIONS ♦ Reward Vault

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🪙"Reward Vault" 🪙

 IT’S ALIVE!

Three animations. 1 rig.

This is a Reward Vault I created using Valence3D app (on Ipad) and Substance Painter. From there, I created a simple rig and produced 3 animation sequences, all done in Maya.

This was part of a personal study on creating 2D game art and animations using 3D. This was also a way to practice learning how to rig and animate in Maya. Nothing complex. Not really aiming for “production level quality”. Just something simple to get the job done for me.

I grabbed a couple of game art animations from 2D games I found on Pinterest to use as inspiration and desired to create something with that kind of vibe/aesthetic.

While I’m still very much a novice to this side of the process, I’ll admit that I am very proud of what I accomplished from this exercise. Compared to my first rig and animation attempt with the Candy Chest, this is certainly a step up and learned a lot, especially on the animation side of things that I’m hoping to carry forward to other experimental projects.

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Tools Used: Valence3D (Ipad) | Maya 2024 | Adobe Substance 3D Painter | Marmoset Toolbag 4 | Photoshop CC 2019 ———————————————————————————————————

♦ SQUIGGLY ICONIMATIONS ♦ HammerTime

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"Pony Tales - Legendary and Epic Pony Patterns Set"

Here are the pony patterns that I made for Pony Tales: My Magic Horse - the newest mobile game title brought to you by the creative masterminds over at Foxie Ventures.

For this project, I was only responsible for textures based on my own designs. Another golden opportunity to further hone my 3D hand-painting skills in Substance Painter.

Overall, I had a lot of fun working on this project and it was pretty amazing seeing everything come together in the final product. Not just for my own contributions but my fellow colleagues as well.

Everyone did a fantastic job bringing this game together and for what it’s worth, I hope that long time fans of Foxie’s games enjoy their newest work!

~SC (2024)

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"Horse Riding Tales - Reward Treasure Chests Set"

Got the opportunity to test my hand-painting skills in a recent update to Horse Riding Tales by Foxie Ventures. Designed a set of four new reward treasure chests and one of them is even featured in the game right now.

Not sure about the remaining three. Nonetheless, overall, I had a lot of fun working on this project. It was great to come up with the designs for the chest and of course, I enjoyed the texturing portion of the project the most.

Really helped me to hone my painting skills in Substance Painter and cement it as my go-to software for hand-painted textures.

Special shoutout to Mike Nixon, Art Manager and Oliver Kiel, Creative Director over at Foxie for their tremendous feedback throughout this project.

~SC (2024)

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The end product of a practice paint I did recently in Substance Painter. I used a free wooden sign asset provided by @nhanceschool and @shabik3d from their free hand-painting tutorial guide.

As stated, this was done purely for practice so that I can get the hand of painting in Substance Painter.

I know SP isn’t particularly the “go-to” for 3D hand-painting. That’s usually either 3DCoat and/or even Photoshop. However SP is my main 3D texturing software.

I use regularly in my professional work and I have painted in the program before with pretty decent results and wanted to give it a try again since it’s been a while since I’ve done it (well…at least not for work and it’s actually using SP to hand-paint for work that inspired me to try painting in it again).

Hand-painted is a style of 3D texturing that I really, really love and want to make my own as a stylized 3D artist. I’m now determined to make Substance my main software to achieve that look since as you can see, it’s definitely capable.

Hoping to test this out some more moving forward.

~SC (2024)

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"2D LIGHTING IN 3D ART ♻️ JUNKSCAPS"

This is another test I did while working on my last mixed media project. Recently, I’ve been experimenting more with Marmoset Toolbag in order to achieve my mix of 2D and 3D art. I tested it out on an asset from a previous project: Junkscraps.

Still one of my personal favourite projects til this date since it best captures the graphical/illustrative style I want to go with for my 3D art.

I learned that you can export your animations (i.e turntable, camera, etc) from Marmoset as an image sequence for compositing in other programs. Not only that, I also learned that I can render out render passes from Marmoset as an image sequence.

For this test, I rendered out a Base Colour/Albedo, Shadow and Highlight Pass of my turntable animation and compiled everything in Photoshop. It took some further experimentation to get the correct blending modes but this is the end results I got.

I’m very, very happy with how this turned out because, if you didn’t know any better, this could easily pass for 2D art when in actuality, it’s all 3D.

I hope to do more projects where I can incorporate what I learnt from this test but will see how things go.

~SC (2024)

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CAFE MARSHMILLE ☕ DTIYS CHALLENGE

*screams from the mountains* FINALLY! It is done!!!

A DTIYS Challenge that took this squiggle meister way too long to complete cause I just had to be EXTRA and be like “Oh why don’t I turn this into a cool mixed media project that has both 2D and 3D in the artwork. I’ve been wanting to do that for sooo long so why not try it with this? Wouldn’t that be swell?”

So after a hot couple of weeks, here it is. The fruit of my labour. I don’t actually think anyone will really notice (or…even care) that this is supposed to be a digital mixed media. But hey, at least I finished it! So HUZZAH for me!

Like I said, my main objective for this piece was to create an illustration that combined my digital art skills with my 3D modeling skills where the end result would feature an art with 2D and 3D elements as well as a stylized 3D prop project.  Something I can also share over on my 3D art blog.

This meant that I had to make my 3D models match the style of my drawing of Marshmilla (the featured character) which, for those of you who have seen some of 3D work, is a style that I really love. I’ve been wanting to marry my 2D with my 3D skills for a long while and this is my first step towards that personal goal.

In case you couldn’t tell, all the props in this piece are 3D models while I drew the character. Speaking of which, the character in question is named Marshmilla.

Marshmilla and her wonderful Cafe Marshmille belong to the very talented Sonia Stegemann. I’ve been following her work a lot lately over on her Instagram page. She actually held an official DTIYS challenge before with the same character but I didn’t get a chance to do that one. This design of Cafe Marshmilla is actually from her personal redraw challenge and I loved the design so much (along with the cafe props) that I asked Sonia if I could draw this version of Marshmilla in my style and she gave me the ok.

Didn’t tell her I was also going to 3D model her cafe prop designs though XD So, for what it’s worth, I hope she likes my rendition of her designs. As always with these challenges, I hope I did the original justice and you folks like my take on it.

Enjoy ya’ll!

~LittleMissSquiggles (2024)

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Mech West - Carry Mech

Back in early 2022, I got the chance to work on the upcoming new 3D animated series created by my 3D alma mater - Animschool. For this project, I create two of the mechs featured in the series. This is the second mech design I got to work on. It's called the Carry Mech.

Similar to the Carrier Mech, I used my modeling skills to bring this cute little helper mech to life under the guidance and supervision of the Mech Modeling Lead, Tatiana Petrova and our Modeling Supervisor, Nina Tarasova, with additional input from Dave Gallagher, the series creator.

I was only responsible for the modeling portion of this mech creation. For this mech in particular, the additional produce assets such as, some of the fruits, vegetables and pastries, featured with it were downloaded from Quixel.

All props to the rest of the team who took this mech after me and realized it even further via textures, rigging and of course, animation. Ya'll did a phenomenal job! It was so cool seeing this guy in the final project which is out NOW on Youtube. You can watch it now right HERE.

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MechWest is a 3D-animated action-adventure TV series for all ages created by AnimSchool Studios. The show takes place in an alternate Old West where robots called “mechs” are household helpers and four distinct nations inspired by real-life desert cultures collide—and their mechs. 

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To find additional information on Mechwest you can go HERE.

There is also hopes from the studio to continue the series via crowd-funding, starting with the next episode through Kickstarter.

You can also check out the series KICKSTARTER CAMPAIGN to help support the show and fund future episodes:

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♦ MECHWEST MECHS ♦ Carrier Mech | Carry Mech

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Mech West - Carrier Mech

Happy that I can finally share this. Back in early 2022, I had the honour of working on an upcoming new 3D animated series created by my 3D alma mater - Animschool. For this project, I used my modeling skills to create two of the mechs featured in the series. This one is called the Carrier Mech.

Under the guidance and supervision of the Mech Modeling Lead, Tatiana Petrova and our Modeling Supervisor, Nina Tarasova, I helped bring this little mech to life. I was only responsible for the modeling portion though. Also special thanks to Dave Gallagher, the series creator, for his input throughout my time during the production process.

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MechWest is a 3D-animated action-adventure TV series for all ages created by AnimSchool Studios. The show takes place in an alternate Old West where robots called “mechs” are household helpers and four distinct nations inspired by real-life desert cultures collide—and their mechs. 

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The first episode is officially out NOW on Youtube. You can watch it now right HERE.

To find additional information on Mechwest you can go HERE.

There is also hopes from the studio to continue the series via crowd-funding, starting with the next episode through Kickstarter.

You can also check out the series KICKSTARTER CAMPAIGN to help support the show and fund future episodes:

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STAR EQUESTRIAN - White Carriage

At long last, to complete this trio of carriages, here is the White Carriage. This is the final of the three carriages that I got the pleasure of working on for Star Equestrian last year.

Star Equestrian is new multiplayer open-world horse-riding mobile game created by Foxie Ventures which was recently released for Android and IOS phones.

As mentioned in my first post, I am currently working as a freelance 3D artist for Foxie Ventures and got the opportunity to create a few assets for their latest mobile game title.

Like the previous two carriages, you can find this one featured in the game. As always, shoutout to my fantastic Art Manager: Mike Nixon who guided me through the process of bringing these assets to life.

—- You can check out the trailer for Star Equestrian right here. For more info on the game, click here. —

Tools Used: Maya 2020.4 | Adobe Substance 3D Painter | Marmoset Toolbag 4 | Unity (for in-game renders)

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♦ STAR EQUESTRIAN CARRIAGE SET ♦

Cab Carriage | Brougham Carriage | White Carriage 

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STAR EQUESTRIAN - Brougham Carriage

As mentioned in my first post, I’m currently I’m working as a freelance 3D artist for Foxie Ventures and last year, I got the opportunity to create a few assets for their latest mobile game title: Star Equestrian—a new multiplayer open-world horse-riding mobile game which was recently released for Android and IOS phones.

This carriage—the Brougham—is the second of the three carriages that I got the pleasure of working on that you can find featured in the game. Shoutout to my fantastic Art Manager: Mike Nixon who guided me through the process of bringing these assets to life.

—- You can check out the trailer for Star Equestrian right here. For more info on the game, click here. —

Tools Used: Maya 2020.4 | Adobe Substance 3D Painter | Marmoset Toolbag 4 | Unity (for in-game renders) ———————————————————————————————————

♦ STAR EQUESTRIAN CARRIAGE SET ♦

Cab Carriage | Brougham Carriage | White Carriage 

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SC (2023)

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STAR EQUESTRIAN - Cab Carriage

Currently I'm working as a freelance 3D artist for Foxie Ventures and last year, I got the opportunity to create a few assets for their latest mobile game title: Star Equestrian---a new multiplayer open-world horse-riding mobile game which was recently released for Android and IOS phones.

This first carriage---the Cab---is one of three that I got the pleasure of working on that you can find featured in the game. Shoutout to my fantastic Art Manager: Mike Nixon who guided and worked with me to bring these assets to life. 

I'm very excited to finally share the results of the fruits of my labour of the past year. ---- You can check out the trailer for Star Equestrian right here. For more info on the game, click here. --- Tools Used: Maya 2020.4 | Adobe Substance 3D Painter | Marmoset Toolbag 4 | Unity (for in-game renders) ———————————————————————————————————

♦ STAR EQUESTRIAN CARRIAGE SET ♦

Cab Carriage | Brougham Carriage | White Carriage ———————————————————————————————————

SC (2023)

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"Stylized Chimney & Fireplace"

A couple weeks prior, I applied for the role of Junior Environment Artist at Polyart and was presented with an art test to complete. For my test, I had to design a stylized modular fireplace and chimney that could be incorporated into the style of their existing work seamlessly inside of Unreal Engine.

  The asset was to feature several different sections that could be assembled to create one seamless object consisting of: a bottom part (the fireplace), a middle part ( a tiling chimney that would go ontop of the fireplace and would be able to tile vertically so that the height of the chimney could be extended indefinitely) and lastly the top part (the chimney top which would be non-tiling).

Here is a test I did of my design inside of a quick mock-up environment scene I made in Unreal Engine 4:

Sadly to say, I didn't get the job. Ultimately the studio opted for another candidate who best matched their style. Nonetheless, they did express liking my overall portfolio while providing me with additional feedback on where I could further improve which I was grateful for.

For me, the most difficult part of this test and the area I had the most challenge with was creating the tiling chimney. Prior to this test, I hadn't had much experience or even practice creating tiling textures. 

While the studio recommended using Substance Designer for that part, I unfortunately have very little experience using Designer. I am, on the other hand, more proficient with its sister program---Substance Painter and in the end, I ended up using a combination of Substance Painter together with Zbrush to produce my tiling texture. 

This was another technique I had never tried before but I am glad I got the opportunity to take it for a spin since it taught me something new. Creating tiling textures with Zbrush and Painter isn't too bad and I'm hoping I use this workflow again for future personal projects.

Overall, one of my main takeaways from this test was that this squiggly 3D wizard should probably look into getting more training or practice with Substance Designer. I've avoided it for far too long mainly because, compared to Painter, Designer UI and process feels so alien to me and I've had difficulty gelling with the program. Still it is on my to-learn list so perhaps I should revisit it sometime soon.

In the meantime, I thought I'd share my test results on here along with my experience. Hope you readers and fellow 3D enthusiasts enjoyed it.

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Tools Used: Maya 2020.4 | Zbrush 2022| Substance 3D Painter | Marmoset Toolbag 4 | Unreal Engine 4.26

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~SC (2022)

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NBA Clash - NBA Lootbag

Last year, I had the honour of working on my first game asset project. I was brought on by CodedArts Ltd - a local boutique, external development and video game studio based in my home country of Trinidad and Tobago- and commissioned to create an asset for the Android mobile game: NBA Clash by Nifty Games.

My assigned asset was a lootbag that was featured in game (See NBA Clash - Gamplay) . I was given concept art provided by Nifty and tasked to create two versions of the bag - one open and one closed with a total polycount of 6k tris for both assets.

I was mainly responsible for modeling and texturing the final assets. As mentioned, this was my first time working on a game asset; especially coming off of graduating from Animschool where I primarily learned how to model for animation.

Believe it or not, 3D modeling for animation versus 3D modeling for games is its own different approach despite sharing similar tools and process, as I soon learnt.

But for the most part, I had a positive experience working on this project. Although short (since I only worked on the asset for about a month), I learnt quite a lot about the game asset production process—a feat which influenced me to pursuing a career in the field full-time.

Big shout out to the CodedArts team for inviting me to work on this project. 

And special thanks to Alex Jadoo (3D Craft Specialist) and Darnell Bruce (Technical Artist) who guided me through working on the asset alongside Caiphus Moore (Creative Director) who provided feedback and support.

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Tools Used: Maya 2020.4 | Substance Painter | Marmoset Toolbag

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~SC (2022)

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“The Green Trees”

I know it's been quite some time since this squiggly 3D wizard made a new post on here and there is a good reason for that. 

As I've been more focused on work these days with my current job, I decided to take a break from personal 3D projects; instead investing my newfound free time to take a second stab at learning Unreal Engine (particularly Version 4.26 since that’s the one that works best for me).

The last time I worked with UE4, I was forced to begrudgingly abandon it due to trouble with the program running on my current computer. Since then, I've upgraded my laptop a bit---it's not much but it's enough to make UE4 run a bit more smoothly for me. 

Because of this, I decided to resume learning UE4 as I would very much love to use it in my workflow.

While I am in no ways an environment painter, having come from an illustrative background, it has been a (long time) goal of mine to marry my digital art skills with my 3D modeling; using 3D as a tool for design in my work; particularly when it comes to props and environments. Here are some screenshots from a UE4 test scene that I recently made in addition to some art that I created from said test scene.  They're not much but I am quite proud of how they turned out and wished to share them on here. ---

Tools Used: Maya 2020.4 | Treeit | Clip Studio Paint Pro | Photoshop 2021 | Unreal Engine 4.26 

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~SC (2022)

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“Cauldron” 

... Double, double toil and trouble, Fire burn and cauldron bubble...

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I've been cooking up this mini side project in the background in between working on my main projects so I'm extremely glad to finally call it complete after all this time. 

This is yet another experimental piece based on an original concept by 2D Artist: Natalia Theli. 

If you wish to see more of Natalia's amazing work, please check out her full portfolio over on Artstation:

I first discovered this concept over on Pinterest and couldn't resist using it to experiment with a few new techniques that I've been meaning to try out in my 3D workflow. 

Techniques such as:

Using Zbrush more in my process. I don’t usually use Zbrush much in my personal projects; however since I’ve been working more with it for my current freelance gig, I’ve truly come to see the value of incorporating it into the stylized texture creation process and now I’m inspired to try to use it more in my own work.

Creating hand-painting textures using the new Adobe Substance 3D Painter as an upgrade from my previous 2021 version of Substance Painter.

And lastly, applying 2D animated effects over renders of my 3D models in Photoshop to create my first mixed media piece, blending 3D with 2D.

As a creative who came from a 2D illustrative background as digital artist before delving into 3D art, you can say that lately I've found myself being drawn into playing around with ways that I can marry both aspects of my style.

It is for this reason why I enjoy art and mediums that combine 3D and 2D elements together. It's why I found movies and series such as RWBY, Into the Spiderverse, Klaus, The Dragon Prince, and the recent Arcane all so fascinating. Each, in their own way, have transcended what one can truly achieve when you combine 3D and 2D together to create something so masterful and beautiful that perfectly encapsulates the appeal of both styles.

Not like I'm saying that this is squiggly 3D wizard is planning to make the next Arcane. Not in the slightest. However I've always been an ambitious lil squiggle meister, never afraid to try something new in the name of creativity even it means stepping out of my comfort zone for a bit or working with something I'm no master of.

To be fair, it has been donkey years since I've flexed my 2D animation skills since I honestly fell out of love with practicing 2D animation since I finished animation school back in 2012. 

Nonetheless, despite not counting myself as an animator, I've still retained an interest in the style and doing this mini experiment was a nice little refresher. 

I mean...sure...it ain't anything too mind-blowing and fancy compared to the more seasoned 2D animation beasts of the world. However; for what's it worth, this lil assignment definitely sold the effect I wanted to capture.

Not saying that I'll be working strictly with 2D animation in my 3D works moving forward. I'm more saying, it's definitely another form of stylized art that I definitely wouldn't mind dabbling with from time to time. 

I mean, after all; as someone with digital illustration, 2D animation and 3D modeling and texturing under her belt, if I can seriously discover new and cool ways to utilize these skills together to create something cool in the name of art then why not, am I right? XD 

Overall, the end results of this mini project proved more promising than I anticipated and on that note, I can't wait to hopefully play around with this type of art style again down the line. 

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Tools Used: Maya 2020.4 | Zbrush 2022 | Adobe Substance 3D Painter | Photoshop CC 2018 | Marmoset Toolbag 4

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~SC (2022)