Let's Get Weird With It
Let's Get Weird With It
With Special Guest Claude the Albino Alligator
On November 30th, I will be honored to speak at the Gravity Sketch Global 3D Design Festival Around 2023 (which you should all register for here for free.)
For this presentation, I will demonstrate how to take a 3D model of a shoe created in Gravity Sketch and use the Substance products to make it awesome. I started with a brilliant shoe model designed by artist Nicholas Sharma. With textures and materials, I planned to make it really shine! Awesome. Easy peasy. I’ve done this before, even with shoes, and felt like I would knock this out.
I begin by going through my usual process of gathering reference images, color schemes, logos, and off we go! But when it came time to actually start texturing, things went off the rails. After hours of work, I stepped back to analyze my creation…and it was super lame. Like ungodly lame. I have no idea how I erred so severely.
No problem. I’ll just step away and start anew again the next day. So I rest, block out some time the next day, and dive back in. And the results!?!?! Still mega lame.
That’s when I have my “Oh #$&%@” moment and start to spiral. I fall down the rabbit hole of doubt.
“Have I lost it?”
“Am I going to embarrass myself on a stage in front of so many people?”
“Can I get out of this? Is it too late to cancel?”
But I take a breath and lean into my past experiences because I have been through this before. After 13 years of being and artist on animated films, I’ve had slumps. And back then, I didn’t have the option of just passing on the opportunity. I had to power through it then and that seasoning gave me the confidence to do it again.
And what worked well for me in the past?
A little time-honored technique I like to call “Let’s get weird with it.”
The idea is basically this…
Instead of taking a step back from the problem to figure it out, you dive into it. You surround yourself with it. You obsess about it. You open your mind and allow everything around you be an opportunity for inspiration. You let it wash over you for a period of time without actually making anything. No matter where you are or what you are doing, keep your mind open to the possibility of being inspired to solve this problem.
And that’s exactly what I did.
So that's what I did! I opened my mind up to possibilities all around me. And it started right away on a drive with my 4-year-old to the Academy of Science. We’re sitting in traffic and the dashboard textures caught my eye. A mesh background with solid lines on top fading into the distance to imply speed. They look zippy and quick. I like it. At a stop, I snapped a photo for reference. Just the beginning!
Next up, the museum itself. We scan our tickets and head in to the main attraction, Claude the Albino Alligator. A 27-year-old creamy white beaut with pink eyes. My son is obsessed with him so we watched him for 15-20 minutes. His pink eyes and creamy white skin inspired me - I struggled with pure whites in my designs, so I decided to try this warmer off-white instead. And add in some pink! Getting creative with an alligator's colors - let's do it.
We head over to the Amazonian Rainforest section and we encounter all these incredible plants. Unique organic shapes and designs. Back home, our bookshelf plant had the same appealing design and I thought it was a sign! Into the inspiration folder they went!
I even (questionably) snapped a photo of a stranger's patterned shoes while fake texting during lunch. Hey, I was fully immersed in "getting weird," no time for social norms!
I gathered all these inspirations into a PureRef board. Time to texture attempt #3. The zippy lines, pinks, warm off-whites, and plant spots crept in. Better! Not perfect, but it's progress.
At this point, I reach out to my community for support. Luis Alcala came through with a shoe he’d designed and I uncovered some new base materials and techniques. Nikie Monteleone demonstrated a rad process of adding subtle creases to the soft cloth areas. The great Casimir Perez provided excellent feedback on adding more detail to the midsole. And many others gave me notes on my transparent mesh design. All incredible advice to help me continue to push forward.
As I type this I’m still not complete, but I see my path forward. Getting weird with it allowed me to open mind and regain my confidence to move forward.
Conclusion
So although this post was more self-centered than I would like to make this newsletter, I hope you can gain something from my experiences. So often, our doubts and self-consciousness stand in the way of us creating what we are capable of. We let that little devil on our shoulder convince us we are not good enough and just shut it down. This is a huge problem for young and inexperienced artists but hopefully this “Getting weird with it” method can help you overcome your artistic blocks, too.
3D News of the Week
Blender 4.0 Features in Less Than 5 Minutes - YouTube
Adobe Substance 9.1 Released - cgchannel.com
I create 3D art for a living, and Apple's M3 chip has made me rethink using a PC - CreativeBloq
Fin-tastic: 3D Artist Dives Into AI-Powered Oceanic Work This Week ‘In the NVIDIA Studio’ - nvidia.com
Skeeva Being Awesome - LinkedIn
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Michael Tanzillo is the Head of Technical Artists with the Substance 3D Growth team at Adobe. Previously, I was a Senior Artist on animated films at Blue Sky Studios/Disney with credits including three Ice Age movies, two Rios, Peanuts, Ferdinand, Spies in Disguise, and Epic.
In addition to his work as an artist, Michael is the Co-Author of the book Lighting for Animation: The Visual Art of Storytelling and the Co-Founder of The Academy of Animated Art, an online school that has helped hundreds of artists around the world begin careers in Animation, Visual Effects, and Digital Imaging.
www.michaeltanzillo.com
Free 3D Tutorials on the Michael Tanzillo YouTube Channel
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