Question: How important is Marvelous Designer for character artists?
Answer: It really depends on the style and how each artist prefers to work. For simplified characters with bigger sharp folds, there’s not much need for Marvelous Designer (MD), but for more complex clothing it’s a great tool that can save an artist time, especially in a production setting where you need a consistent level of quality that’s repeatable.
Question: What tips do you give to students you mentor at Vertex School who are just getting started with Marvelous Designer?
Answer: I recommend my students to use MD as a blockout tool for clothing because you can quickly get a full outfit with accurate folds and draping. In the beginning I don’t recommend students to take it much further than a blockout because things can get complicated pretty quickly. This also allows them to explore moving assets between Zbrush and MD while figuring out what ratio of modeling to simulating they prefer and then from there they can dive in.
Question: Where do you find inspiration? Are you a member of any social media groups? Any favorite hashtags you check on a daily basis? Any favorite blogs or websites?
Answer: My inspiration usually comes from wanting to develop in new areas, interests and hobbies. For example, I currently want to improve the movement and emotion in my work so I’ll find concepts or ideas that express that and then execute.
3D printing is also another big interest for me so just trying to push what I can do there is another source of inspiration. I stay up to date with websites like ArtStation, Instagram, Facebook groups and YouTube but that’s less for inspiration and more to just stay in the loop. I find that if my only inspiration is seeing other artworks, my personal work becomes less enjoyable because it begins feeling too copy and paste.
Question: How do you keep your portfolio up-to-date? Any tips?
Answer: Honestly I don’t worry about having an up-to-date portfolio now, a few years ago I did and my main tips for staying up-to-date would be to figure out a pipeline first so the process becomes easy and you can focus on making good art. Another one is to make art a habit, decide how much personal work you’d like to do each week or day and be disciplined enough to stick to your schedule.
In my experience though, focusing on quality and enjoying the process overrides staying up-to-date. For my students I’ve seen that one great character beats three average ones in terms of employability and personal development. That being said, I don’t think there’s that much need to focus on staying up-to-date if those are your aims. Staying up-to-date is more important when it comes to building a social media following or boosting your online presence in my experience.
Question: What has been your favorite project that you used Marvelous Designer on?
Answer: My favorite project I used MD on was a game that got scrapped unfortunately but it was great for sharing stuff with the team, fast turnarounds, updating old assets and so on. In a production environment where all of those things are important MD is invaluable.
What can we expect to see from you next?
Answer: Once I finish exploring and experimenting with new tech and tools I should be back online full force with models for 3D printing and process videos.
