I neglected to reply to this yesterday, so I’ll make a quick sidenote. After a fair bit of self-reflection recently, I realized I really don’t have much practice with most of the artistic fundamentals. For that reason, I’m going to try to get a good mix of A. realism- focusing on modeling, lighting, and detail; and B. stylization- focusing on stylization techniques, building a scene, and texture painting.
I also need to gain some 2D art skills, so I’ll be trying to update my 2D sketchbook as well. I’ve realized one of my biggest shortcomings is my inability to generate concept sketches, and I think getting my drawing up to that level will make my 3D work 50-60% better off the bat.
To the other half of your statement… I don’t think I’ve really nailed down my “style” for myself either My ultimate goal- not for this project, this is more like a 20-year goal- is to be able to tell the stories that come to me in dreams through animation in Blender. My dreams are vivid, highly plot-driven and intricate, and heavily stylized. While I don’t think it’s possible, nor do I think it would work well, to exactly replicate that highly imaginative style, I do find a traditional 2D-esque animated workflow to be a good medium for expressing it, hence why a lot of my work veers towards the 2D-stylized realm.
Again, I need a lot more work on the basics before I can commit myself to that, so I’m not worried about that right now.
I’m planning on illustrating a graphic novel (or webcomic series, it’s still being decided) an author friend is writing in the near-ish future. The style for that will be more or less this: MODS-12 (Mobile Oxygen Delivery System) but with more hand-painted elements in the backgrounds. Once that project officially starts, I’ll be leaning more into hand-painting and stylization just for the sake of that project, but last I heard, that’s a few months out still.
Anyway, that’s a lot of information, sorry It’s good for me to write it out, it will be helpful to refer back to this later so I can remind myself what I’m doing and what I should be focusing on