Michael Robson: 3D character artist interview

I’m a 3D character artist based in Curitiba, Brazil. My focus is mostly fantasy/dark characters. I worked in an advertising studio for 3 years, but now I’m currently working as a freelance character artist for different projects from advertising to cinematics.

My workflow has not changed that much over the years, of course you learn more and do things faster, but basically I do a rough sculpt in ZBrush, move to 3ds Max/Maya for poly modeling and get clean meshes, then I move to Maya to do the hair in Gen and render in Arnold. (Sometimes I use V-Ray in 3ds Max as well.) My inspiration most of the time is influenced by movies, games, and books that I like (Tolkien, Dark Souls, Diablo, and so on…)

I always choose a subject that challenges me in some way; it could be anatomy, hair, or a different shader. The Goblin character was a bit stressful for me because I decided to push my anatomy skills further from previous projects and he also has a lot of exposed skin, so it took more time to plan and texture him as well. Magni (the dwarf) on the other hand had a lot of hair, so my main challenge there was to make a nice looking face for him and the hair ­– I never did something as complex as that before.

I use a combination of different softwares depending on the task, including professional or personal work. For example, I use Marvelous Designer for clothing, XGen/Ornatrix for hair, Substance Painter/Mari for texturing, Arnold/V-Ray for render, and of course our old friend ZBrush.

I’m not that kind of guy who updates the portfolio every month with a new piece, I take my time for personal stuff, sometimes I have to learn something new on the way, so I have to stop a bit and study that subject. But what I recommend is, focus on quality and try to set a deadline for your project. Some people say that if it is your project you can take your time, yes that’s true, especially if you are learning something new, but if you are always taking too long to finish you might face some problems with deadline/schedules when a professional work comes up.

Yeah, I use Instagram and Facebook a lot, I follow some hashtags such as ZBrush, Creatures, Fantasy Art, Character Art, Creature Design, and Anatomy.

I don't really know to be honest ha! Creating some really nice creatures for games and movies that I love would be nice I think! And of course push my skills to be better every day.

Recently I’ve been following some artists that are great sculptors. I really like to observe the way they represent the form and how clean they can translate to a sculpt. My great friends Cesar Zambelli and José Pericles... Samuel Poirier, Leon Enriquez, Pascal Clemente, Kris Costa, Gio Nakpil… I also like 2D, I’ve been following the work of Dave Rapoza, Kekai Kotaki, Chase Stone, Karla Ortiz, Chris Rahn and many other Magic The Gathering artists, and of course the old masters such as Bernini and Michelangelo.

I’m taking a break from long projects recently to focus more on sculpt and anatomy, those are the things that I want to be better at, so I will probably post more content related to that!