How to become a 3D Character Artist?
Hello! I'm currently a senior in High School, and I've been working on 3D Modeling ever since the start of September (I took a Udemy Course on how to create Character Models for games, you can see the orc I made in my portfolio link), and I think I really want to make 3D Characters as a career! I was wondering if I could get some general advice on things I need to know and do in order to get into a 3D Art career? I'm talking about things such as:
- Art and Modeling fundamentals I need to learn
- Possible resources to learn said art fundamentals
- Effective practicing techniques to help improve my art
- Possible advice on how to be prepared for the industry?
- Anything else I should probably know
Any information would be insanely helpful!
Replies
Hello, I'm just giving my two cents on your questions so take that with a grain of salt as I'm not a professional in this field... more like a junior level. There are people who may give better advice due to their years of experience but we all start somewhere.
1.) First off, have a passion for this field because you will be doing a LOT of work, especially building your portfolio over your time. For all you know you may switch interests during your journey (based off your portfolio so far) you've only done one piece. That's fine, however I think you should start WAY smaller with props and build up to characters. Reason being is that characters (in my opinion) are one of the more difficult routes in 3D as they have lots of smaller details you have to keep in mind like clothes, hair, proper anatomy, rigging, topology, and animation.
2.) If you are wanting to learn more about making characters though I think the first thing would be learning some traditional art fundamentals like shapes, forms and taking up life/figure drawing. Even if the characters you make are stylized or anime, you still have to have proper understanding of anatomy to translate that into 3D.
3.) I personally would recommend the life/figure drawing for getting anatomy down. But more importantly start small with props to get a grip on knowing the software's you will be working with a lot (i.e. Blender/Maya, ZBrush, Substance Painter, or whatever software that covers your needs. They're just tools to create with.) Right now for you as a beginner it is fine to follow exactly what is going on in a tutorial but make sure with each new project you're striving to actually learn something new, and by that I mean branch out of tutorials later down the line and avoid making exact copies of the tutorial. Take what you're viewing as a guide to build your own creation, it's a very effective way to learn even if that's failing the first few times. There is too much info to cram into this for practicing but for now I'll just say: Good reference images, model stuff (rinse and repeat), watch Blender Guru https://www.youtube.com/c/BlenderGuruOfficial/playlists just to start out with.
4.) For the industry my understanding of it is that Character Artists is an extremely competitive position. That isn't to discourage you but it certainly isn't going to be easy and you've got a lot to learn along with pretty much everyone else (you never stop learning.) I think some good tidbits of information about what to expect going into the industry can be found here on polycount. Here's some to begin with:
5.) Final note, if this is something you wanna do as a career keep telling yourself that everyday. Don't give up. Plain and simple, all successful artists in any field never just "got in". There is no clear line of success or path for everyone to follow but every person I've looked into all have one thing in common and that is not quitting. Try everything and see what clicks. Good luck, you can do it. (This goes for anybody else reading.)