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Mechanic Boy Breakdown
🕑 Added 2025-03-11 01:30:42 +0000 UTCI must admit that I sort of stumbled with this character by accident, he wasn't even in my plans when I started working on the characters for the last poll, the idea came while searching for industrial/mechanical references for the Booth Boy sketch.
So when it comes to the character itself, I can't say he is anything super original, most of it's main features can be found just by googling "sexy mechanic":
Denim shorts? check ✔
Greasy stains? check ✔
Trucker hat? check ✔
Tick Gloves? check ✔
Tattoos? check ✔
But I think that despite all the clichê elements, the idea is just fun and fit's well with the erotic themes, I do think I manage to combine the elements into a character that is sexy and somewhat charismatic, but in general, I think the idea just kinda sells it self , I guess things don't always have to be complicated 😅
On the art side I wanted to change things a little, so instead of creating a series with multiple pictures, I decided to spend a long time in one single picture and polish it as much as possible, and in order to do so I decided to start by making a 3D reference:
This is something I use to do a lot in the past, and it can be a very good tool for when you're aiming for realism, specially when it comes to lighting, but this process have 2 big downsides, the first is that it takes a lot of time, making a 3D ref like this will take a full day of work, or even two depending on the complexity of the scene.
The second downside is that you can lose a lot of gesture and exaggeration when you work with a 3D base, unless you're very careful, the characters can end up feeling very stiff and motionless, like muscle-less manequins.
The first problem can't really be avoided, when working in this style you got to be ok with the fact that it will take more time to finish the picture
The second problem can be avoided by using the 3D ref only as a very loose guide, reducing the value contrast to a very subtle level, and applying a heavy dose of blur to the image, this way you will ensure that the 3D ref will only serve as a guide for the main masses and shapes, but the bulk of the decisions will have to come from your imagination, stylization and exaggeration of anatomy and perspective, otherwise you might end up letting the 3D ref make most of the decisions for you, and we really don't want that.
With that said, you might be wondering, "if I'm not gonna follow the 3D closely, why make it?", and the answer is; you got to use your 3D refs just as you would use any other ref, you need to extract the useful information, while ignoring the things that are useless or just visual noise, here's a example:
You will notice the the anatomical information in the 3D refs is very rudimentary, if you follow it too closely your character will end up looking like a plastic doll, to avoid that you need to find a different ref that will provide the information you need:
But while the 3D ref anatomy isn't useful, the lighting information is, and if you compare the 3D ref with the final picture, you will see that the overall shapes of the light areas are very similar:
And it is the same with this other area:
That's the tricky part of using a 3D ref in your artistic process, the 3D ref will give you many "answers" to your problems, but only a few of these "answers" will be "correct", it is your job as the artist to filter the good information from all the noise, and that's a very difficult task when you don't know the answers by yourself first.
So in general, you should never use a 3D ref to make something you can't do by yourself, but rather, only for things you don't want to do by yourself, things that will facilitate or speed up your process. If I wanted, I could have figured out all that lighting by myself, but it would have taken way longer than it did, so in this case, the 3D ref was very useful, but knowing how to do it by myself gave me the ability to filter the 3D ref and only take from it what is useful to my process.
And that's pretty much it, hope this breakdown was an interesting read.
thanks a lot for your support and patience my friends ^^
Cheers!
Comments
The sabu
thanks for the comment Shae, and you can be this isn't the last time we see our cute mechanic boy and all his tools ^^
The sabu
thanks for the comment my friend, I'm glad you found it interesting ^^
Anton
As always, it is really fascinating to hear about your process. Your points about how you use the 3D model, sorting out the information you need, is such an interesting process I'd never considered as I am not a visual artist.
Shae Guerin
I totally hear you about using 3D as a reference. A lot of what I see often looks... not wrong, but off. Can't let one's tools take over for talent. Good of you to spend the time doing this, I look forward to seeing this cute mechanic smile as a hard tool slides in!
